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Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and before that FutureSplash), or simply Flash, refers to both the Adobe Flash Player and to a multimedia authoring program used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies). The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (which bought Macromedia), is a client application available in most dominant web browsers. It features support for vector and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bidirectional streaming of audio and video.
Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash is an integrated development environment (IDE) while Flash Player is a virtual machine used to run, or parse, the Flash files, but in contemporary colloquial terms "Flash" can refer to the authoring environment, the player or the application files.
Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to: create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, integrate video into web pages, and more recently, develop rich Internet applications such as portals.
The Flash files, traditionally called "flash movies", usually have a .swf file extension and may be an object of a web page or strictly "played" in the standalone Flash Player.
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