Flash Article

This article is taken fromWikipedia and talk about macromedia flash.

Macromedia Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both the Macromedia Flash Player and to a multimedia authoring program used to create content for it. The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (formerly by Macromedia), is a client application available in most web browsers. It features support for vector and raster graphics, a native scripting language called ActionScript and bidirectional streaming of audio and video.

Strictly speaking, Macromedia Flash is the integrated development environment (IDE) and Flash Player is the virtual machine used to run the Flash files, but in colloquial language these have become mixed: "Flash" can mean either the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.

Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology became a popular alternative to add animation and interactivity to web pages and several software products, systems and devices feature Flash content display or creation capabilities. Flash is commonly used to create animations, advertisements, design elements on a web page, add video to web sites and more recently, to develop Rich Internet Applications.

The Flash files, traditionally called "flash movies", usually have a .swf file extension and may appear as an element of a web page or to be "played" in the standalone Flash Player.