Macromedia Flash

Macromedia Flash is a vector graphics based graphics animation

program by Macromedia. The resulting files, sometimes called "flash files", may be included in a web page to view in a web browser, or they may be played on a standalone player. The most common use is in animated adverts on web pages.

Table of contents 1 Pros and Cons 1.1 Advantages 1.2 Disadvantages 2 How to disable Flash in Microsoft Windows 3 Competition 4 File Types 5 External links 5.3 Creating Flash files 5.4 Format documentation 5.5 Communities 5.6 Art 5.7 Security

Pros and Cons

Advantages
The Macromedia Flash file format has several advantages over "regular" HTML pages that make it an extremely popular option for ad creation and for some other types of sites.

Flash circumvents browser controls which block the display of animation on web pages, allowing ads to display animation even when the end user has turned off the capability in the browser. Like PostScript, SVG and PDF, Flash allows exact specification of where the various page elements are, and so it gives the designer a great degree of control over how the user interface looks. In some people's opinions, it is much more difficult to do the same with HTML and CSS.

Again, like PostScript, SVG and PDF Flash uses vector graphics; they may translate into small file sizes which take less bandwidth to transmit than bitmaps do. The Flash file format has been opened by Macromedia, and compatible thirdparty tools exist. Flash's file format is not platform-dependent; Flash Players exist on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux and various other Unix systems. Flash allows the embedding of images, sounds, movies and simple HTML files. These abilities make it a good multimedia platform. Flash Player 6 also supports two-way streaming of sound and video, thus being an excellent platform for high-level multi-user applications. Flash's embedded ActionScript language (an application of the ECMAScript programming language) allows the creation of simple fill-in-the-blank forms. Flash is a highly ubiquitous format. According to Macromedia, the Flash Player penetration is well over 95%. Flash Players exist for PDAs, cellular phones and even for the Java platform.

In Flash MX, the ActionScript language has been extended to the proposed ECMA Script 4 standard and can be used to create extensive event driven GUI's. Flash MX 2004 introduced ActionScript 2.0, which features strong types, interfaces, inheritance and other features of advanced object-oriented programming languages. Macromedia has stated their intention of moving Flash away from the simple animations of web ad banners and move toward true application development.

Disadvantages
There are also some disadvantages to Flash and these have caused some of the initial surge in use outside ads to decline, as the negative consequences of Flash use were seen:

Flash content is not accessible to search engines, so sites using Flash experience decreased visibility in search engines unles redesigned to allow for this problem. This doesn't matter for ads, so use in ads hasn't been affected. Viewer plugins don't exist for all systems, officially only for; Linux, Windows, Mac, Solaris, HP-UX, Pocket PC, OS2, and Irix platforms. Oliver Debon wrote an open source version of the Flash 3 player and it has been ported to just about every OS including the Amiga. The Flash Player is not installed on all computers. Because the flash movie is played from a user agent plug-in, limited memory resources are availlable to the flash-movie. This is the amount of memory the user agent allocates for the plugin. This amount depends on the user agent used.

Though the flash file format is ostensibly "open", it is still controlled by Macromedia and not based upon a truly open standard such as SVG, which reduces the incentive for non-commercial software to support it. The Macromedia player can not be shipped as part of a pure open source, or completely free operating system. Due to Flash's graphical nature, it does not degrade gracefully to disabled users. It is possible to overcome this only by providing alternative content (for example in HTML). See also accessibility. Flash does not support internationalization thoroughly. Flash demands significant CPU power to display, as it uses a very high degree of graphic abstraction that many video cards are not able to accelerate. Particularly, the anti-aliasing utilized by the Flash Player is heavy on the computer. The browser plug-in may store and retrieve information on the user's computer, acting much like HTTP cookies and with similar advantages and disadvantages, but without the common ability to restrict this saving of information, which browsers provide for cookies. Although this has never been an actual problem, the plug-in has had security flaws which theoretically may open up a computer to remote attack (e.g., see [1]and [1] for a December 2002 problem). Critics charge that many Flash animations are nothing more than eye candy, and many users say that they are ugly. The .swf files it makes aren't secure. There are several commercial programs out there that can allow someone to extract graphics, sounds, etc. from a .swf file and also view its ActionScript. There's even an open source program called flasm that allows someone to extract ActionScript from a .swf file as "bytecode", edit it, and then reinsert it into the file. However, the swf obfuscation makes the extraction not feasible in most cases. Flash does not respect browser settings which prevent animation from displaying, one reason why it is commonly used for animated ads. Microsoft Internet Explorer gives a security warning which asks for permission to let a site run ActiveX controls. The warning doesn't specify which site or which controls, so a prudent end-user must look at the source code of all parts of the page before allowing Flash to run, in case the site, one of the ads on it or a pop-up or pop-under is also using a control which is a security problem.

In Flash MX 2004, the latest releases, several of the disadvantages have been addressed. See http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html for a discussion of Flash and usability.

How to disable Flash in Microsoft Windows

Attempts to download and install Flash can be prevented by adding http://download.macromedia.com to the Restricted Sites security zone in Internet Explorer or by blocking access to that site in other ways. Adding ad services to the Restricted Sites zone will prevent them from being able to use Flash ads. Saving the following text to a file called noflash.reg and double-clicking on it will turn off Flash support in Internet Explorer, by adding Flash to the list of ActiveX controls the system administrator deems a security problem:
REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\ActiveX Compatibility\\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}] "Description"="prevents Macromedia Flash from running when flags are 00000400" "Compatibility Flags"=dword:00000400

Saving this to flashon.reg and double-clicking on it will remove the block.

REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\ActiveX Compatibility\\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}] "Description"="this prevents Macromedia Flash from running when flags are 00000400" "Compatibility Flags"=dword:00000000

There are exactly five lines in each of these, starting with REGEDIT4 and ending with Compatibility Flags. Use copy and paste to get them exactly as written and avoid the possible effect of line wrapping which can prevent them from working properly. Combining these steps will let you turn off Flash animated ads and requests to install most of the time, choosing to install it or let it run only when you encounter one of the rare sites which can't be used without Flash. It's possible to block Macromedia Shockwave with similar files, replacing {D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000} with {166B1BCA-3F9C-11CF8075-444553540000} .

Competition
In October of 1998 Macromedia disclosed the Flash Version 3 Specification to the world on its website in response to many new, and often semi open, competing formats to SWF such as; XARA's Flare and Sharp's Extended Vector Animation formats. Several developers quickly created a C library for producing SWF. In Feburary of 1999 MorphInk 99 was launched, the first non-Macromedia, or

third party program to create SWF files. Macromedia also hired Middlesoft to create a freely avialble developers kit for the SWF file format versions 3-5. Many open and free libraries based on the information released to the public in 1998 and from later study of the SWF file Format, such as Ming, exist to produce SWF files on many platforms. The Flash Files specification for version 6 and later is avaialble from Macromedia only as a PDF under a NDA agreement. Many Shareware companies produced Flash creation tools and sold them for under $50 USD between 2000-2002. In 2003 competition and the emergence of Free Flash Creation tools, most notably Open Office, had driven many third party flash creation tool makers out of the market allowing the remaining makers to raise their prices, although many of the products remain under $100 USD and support Action Script. In November of 2003 Microsoft announced that it was working on competing product, Sparkle, whose release would coincide with that of their next-generationWindows OS codenamed Longhorn. The purchase of Creature House Inc's assets in September of 2003 has lead to speculation that their Expression graphics engine would form the basis for the Sparkle product.

File Types

.fla files are the source files, which contain source material for the flash application. They can be edited with Flash authoring software. .as (or sometimes .actionscript) files contain ActionScript, the source code for Flash applications. .swf files are completed, published files that cannot be edited. "swf" is pronounced "swiff". .flv files are Flash video files, that can be created by Macromedia Flash or Sorenson Squeeze.

Later versions of Flash can also create files in a variety of static or animated formats. See also: limited animation, Shockwave, Weebl and Bob (Flash cartoon)

External links
Creating Flash files

Macromedia homepage An online flash generator SWiSHmax, a Flash authoring program

KoolMoves, a Flash and SVG authoring program 3D Flash Animator Open Office - open source office suite that includes Flash export support Draw SWF - open source SWF authoring program Ming - open source library for creating Flash files

Format documentation

OpenSWF Flash format site A Concise Guide to the SWF File Format, Macromedia documentation published in 1998

Communities

Ultrashock Flash forums Flashkit - Flash resource and meeting place. Flashkit also organizes large international Flash conferences.

Art

Whitney Biennial exhibition BetaSpace - a Flash based new media art gallery Orisinal - simple games with elaborate art Segway - interactive model of Segway HT HomeStarRunner.com - Homestar Runner cartoons Moonfruit - hosts websites created entirely in automatically-generated Flash

The Advantages of Using Macromedia Flash

By Matthew Schieltz, eHow Contributor updated: December 23, 2009

1. Flash, a program introduced by Macromedia in the mid-1990s and acquired by Adobe in 2005, is a design platform used to create streaming animations for websites and a variety of other documents. Even though Flash is not as popular with website developers and webmasters as it once was because of Flash's difficulty attracting search

engine bots, there are many advantages to using it as a web design tool to produce interactive games, business presentations and flashy websites.

Elegant Web Designs

2. Using Flash, designers can make elegant web designs and flashy website introductions. A company often decides to use Flash on a website because it provides stylish and/or entertaining visual elements for site visitors, making the site more attractive. Flash allows designers to produce entire websites that include nice layouts and interactive menus. Individuals can also decide to integrate only a website's introduction in Flash while building the rest of the site in traditional HTML or another coding language.

Compatibility
3. Designs made with Flash are compatible on the overwhelming majority of Windows-based PCs and Mac systems as well as Internet browsers. Many systems even come preinstalled with Flash. Flash designs and presentations, which are viewable on the Internet in a web browser, simply require a plug-in, which means that designers who use Flash don't need to worry about cross-platform compatibility.

Versatile
4. Flash is a versatile platform for creating a variety of documents. Flash is actually based on a vector-based animation system, which essentially means that animations designed using Flash can easily rescale without losing the quality of the document; this is a benefit when designing interactive games and videos, and producing short movies viewable online. As well, designers can easily embed Macromedia Flash creations in a variety of documents and software, including Microsoft Office and business processing software.

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