Adobe Flash

From Anipedia

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a user-friendly digital animation program. Movies produced on Flash can be published on many internet sites, and is thus the leading medium for the creation of internet cartoons.

Flash is a vector program, allowing smoother images than pixel formats like Microsoft Paint. It utilizes various frames in which pictures can be drawn which, when played, creates an animation. There are various tools in Flash to ease basic animation needs, such as having different layers and the ability to group images together.

Flash also uses Actionscript, a Java-like program, to create interactivity within movies. Actionscript allows the user to create anything from start and replay buttons to full games utilizing Flash.

[edit] Version History

Flash grew out of a chain of thought that started in the 1980s with some ideas Jonathan Gay had at school, then at college and later while working for Silicon Beach Software and its successors. In January 1993, Charlie Jackson, Jonathan Gay, and Michelle Welsh started a small software company called FutureWave Software and created their first product, SmartSketch. A drawing application, SmartSketch was designed to make creating computer graphics as simple as drawing on paper. Although SmartSketch was an innovative drawing application, it didn't gain enough of a foothold in its market. As the Internet began to thrive, FutureWave began to realize the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might easily challenge Macromedia's often slow-to-download Shockwave technology. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and re-released it as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh and PC. By that time, the company had added a second programmer Robert Tatsumi, artist Adam Grofcsik, and PR specialist Ralph Mittman. The product was offered to Adobe and used by Microsoft in its early (MSN) work with the Internet. In December 1996, Macromedia acquired the vector-based animation software and later released it as Flash 1.0.

• FutureSplash Animator - 1995: A vector-based animation program with basic editing tools and a timeline.

• Macromedia acquires FutureSplash - December 1996

• Macromedia Flash 1 - December 1996: re-hash of FutureSplash animator with Macromedia logos.

• Macromedia Flash 2 - June 1997: Support of stereo sound, enhanced bitmap integration, buttons, the object library, and the capability to tween color changes.

• Macromedia Flash 3 - May 31^st, 1998: Brought improvements to animation, playback, and publishing, as well as the introduction of simple script commands for interactivity. Macromedia ships its 100,000th Flash product this year, as well.

• Macromedia Flash 4 - June 15^th, 1999: Achieved 100 million installations of the Flash Player, thanks in part to its inclusion with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. Flash 4 saw the introduction of streaming MP3s and the Motion Tween. Initially, the Flash Player plug-in was not bundled with popular web browsers and users had to visit Macromedia website to download it, but as of year 2000, the Flash Player was already being distributed with all AOL, Netscape and Internet Explorer browsers. Two years later it shipped with all releases of Windows XP. The install-base of the Flash Player reached 92% of all Internet users.

• Macromedia Flash 5 - August 24^th, 2000: Flash 5 was a major leap forward in capability, with the evolution of Flash's scripting capabilities as released as ActionScript. Flash 5 also saw the ability to customize the authoring environment's interface.

• Macromedia Generator was the first initiative from Macromedia to separate design from content in Flash files. Generator 2.0 was released in April 2000 and featured real-time server-side generation of Flash content in its Enterprise Edition. Generator was discontinued in 2002 in favor of new technologies such as Flash Remoting, which allows for seamless transmission of data between the server and the client, and ColdFusion Server.

• Macromedia Flash MX and Macromedia Flash Player 6 - March 15^th 2002: with support for video, application components, shared libraries, and accessibility.

• Flash Communication Server MX- 2002: allowed video to be streamed to Flash Player 6 (otherwise the video could be embedded into the Flash movie).

• Macromedia Flash MX 2004 - September 10^th, 2004: with features such as faster runtime performance up to 8 times with the enhanced compiler and the new Macromedia Flash Player 7, ability to create charts, graphs and additional text effects with the new support for extensions (sold separately), high fidelity import of PDF and Adobe Illustrator 10 files, mobile and device development and a forms-based development environment. ActionScript 2.0 was also introduced, giving developers a formal Object-Oriented approach to ActionScript. V2 Components replaced Flash MX's components, being rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of ActionScript 2.0 and Object-Oriented principles. Flash MX 2004 was the first release of Flash to be segmented into "Basic" and "Professional" versions. The Basic version was targeted at traditional Flash animators while the Professional version brought more advanced capabilities that developers would use, for example the data components.

• Flash Platform - 2004: This expanded Flash to more than the Flash authoring tool. Flex 1.0 and Breeze 1.0 were released, both of which utilized the Flash Player as a delivery method but relied on tools other than the Flash authoring program to create Flash applications and presentations. Flash Lite 1.1 was also released, enabling mobile phones to play Flash content.

• Macromedia Flash 8 - September 13^th 2005: is touted by Macromedia as the most significant upgrade to Flash since Flash 5. New features included filter effects and blending modes, bitmap caching, a new video codec called On2 VP6, an enhanced type rendering engine called FlashType, an emulator for mobile devices, and several enhancements to the ActionScript 2.0 spec, such as the BitmapData class, several geometric classes, and the ConvolutionFilter and DisplacmentMapFilter classes.

• Flash Lite 2 - 2005: brought its capabilities in line with Flash Player 7.

• Adobe acquires Macromedia - December 3^rd, 2005.

• Adobe Flash Player 9 released for Windows and Mac OS - 2006: marked the first time a Flash Player major release occurred without a simultaneous Flash authoring program major release. Flex 2.0 was released in conjunction with Flash Player 9, and the player will be continued when Flash Authoring 9 is released in 2007. For the first time in the history of Flash, the Flash Player will have had an opportunity to become widely installed before the release of the equivalent Flash program.

• Adobe Flash Player 9 released for Linux - January 2007.

• Adobe Flash 9 Public Alpha - 2006: preview of ActionScript 3.0.

• Adobe Flash CS3 - April 16^th, 2007: originated from Flash 9 Public Alpha with several updates for integrating into other Adobe products, is released as a bundled software of the Adobe Creative Suite 3. This currently-newest version also brings ActionScript 3.0 and a new XML engine to the Flash authoring tool. Also has an improved and optimized GUI like the rest of the CS3 suite.

• Adobe Flash CS4 - October 15^th, 2008: Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe Flash CS4 are officially released. New features include 3D rotation, spray brush, deco tool, a more advanced tweening tool with curve and parameter editings, and inverse kinematics. The older motion tween is renamed to a 'classic tween'.