Flash

Adobe Flash (formerly called Macromedia Flash and Shockwave Flash) is a multimedia and software platform used for creating vector graphics, animation, games and rich Internet applications (RIAs) that can be viewed, played and executed in Adobe Flash Player.

Flash is frequently used to add streamed video or audio players, advertisement and interactive multimedia content to web pages, although usage of Flash on websites is declining.

Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images.

Adobe Flash Professional is the most popular authoring tool for creating the Flash content, which also allows automation via the JavaScript Flash language (JSFL). Adobe's attempt to foster open source Flash development appears to have been abandoned.

Adobe Flash Player makes the Flash content accessible on various operating systems such as Windows, OS X and Linux, under a few of the major operating systems, some smartphones and tablets, and a few other electronic devices using Flash Lite.

In April 2006, the Flash SWF file format specification was released with details on the then newest version format.

The file format specification document is offered only to developers who agree to a license agreement that permits them to use the specifications only to develop programs that can export to the Flash file format.

The license forbids the use of the specifications to create programs that can be used for playback of Flash files. The Flash 9 specification was made available under similar restrictions.