Adobe Flash means
A flash movie can contain
Movies are played in a player. The player can be
A common movie format is SWF (stands for "small web file" — it used to stand for "Shockwave Flash" but Shockwave is an entirely different beast from Flash and has practically nothing in common with it so don't even get those terms confused). Generally you produce SWFs like this:
More specifically, you can
Note that there exist other applications besides Flash that produce SWFs.
You can use the FlashPlayer to run the SWF movie, or create a projector out of it. Be aware that the projector is like, really big, since it contains the player (interpreter).
During development (if using the Flash IDE), you can do [Command|Test Movie] (Ctrl+Enter).
SWFs are related to or compete with
The Good
The Bad
Version | Date | Notes |
---|---|---|
FutureSplash | 1995? | Basically just 2-D vector animation |
Flash 1 | Dec 1996 | Macromedia Brand |
Flash 2 | Jun 1997 | Object library, stereo sound |
Flash 3 | May 1998 | MovieClip object, transparency, MP3 support |
Flash 4 | Jun 1999 | Variables, input fields, streaming MP3 |
Flash 5 | Aug 2000 | ActionScript now a real programming language (built on ECMAScript 3), XML support, SmartClips (now called components), HTML formatting |
Flash MX a.k.a. Flash 6 |
May 2002 | Sorenson Sparc Video codec, Unicode, UI components, vector drawing, Flash remoting |
Flash MX2004 a.k.a. Flash 7 |
Sep 2003 | ActionScript 2.0 (ECMAScript 4, class-based), Aliased text, Timeline effects, streaming audio and video, CSS-based styles extensibility layer, significantly faster player |
Flash 8 | Sep 2005 | Filters and blend modes, enhanced drawing, FlashType advanced antialiasing, GIF/PNG support, security enhancements |
Flash 9 | Player in 2006 IDE to follow |
ActionScript 3.0, with regexes and namespaces, New virtual machine (AVM2), E4X, sockets, Adobe brand |
It is worth noting that