Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to Web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements and games. More recently, it has been positioned as a tool for the so-called "Rich Internet Application" ("RIA").

Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an Object-oriented language called ActionScript.

Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free for common Web browsers, some mobile phones and a few other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).

History

Originally acquired by Macromedia, Flash was introduced in 1996, and is currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. The precursor to the Flash application was SmartSketch, a drawing application for pen computers running the PenPoint OS developed by Jonathan Gay, who began working on it in college and extended the idea for Silicon Beach Software and its successors....