Flash

Flash offers the possibility of bringing multimedia effects to web pages, but also applications such as games, simulations or navigation support for web pages.

In the broadest sense, Flash is the standard for animations and vector graphics on the Internet. Due to its numerous advantages and high level of integrity, it enjoys great popularity and has been able to establish itself with many web developers over the past few years.

Flash is an animation program from Macromedia that can be used to create Flash films, among other things. These are characterized by a comparatively very small file size and amazing scalability, so that they are almost indispensable today, for example for multimedia websites due to the relatively short loading times.

The advantages of Flash

Flash animations are always vector-based. The biggest advantages of Flash are:

great scalability without loss of quality

low storage space requirements, resulting in relatively short transmission times.

Flash content is almost always animated and thus brings plenty of dynamics to an Internet presence.

Videos and sounds can also be inserted into Flash, so that Flash films can very effectively be given multimedia features. Thanks to the Actionscript script language, interactive content can also be generated using forms and similar elements. The potential of Flash is difficult to grasp and its possibilities are almost unlimited

The disadvantages of Flash:

Of course, Flash also has its downsides. The biggest disadvantage of Flash is the Flash browser plugin, which is a prerequisite for displaying Flash content. This plugin is still not integrated by default in every browser or has to be explicitly selected when it is installed and should be constantly updated due to new versions appearing. Nevertheless, Flash is becoming increasingly popular and, according to the manufacturer, is not installed in less than five percent of all users worldwide. Another serious disadvantage of Flash is that content cannot be indexed by search engines, which makes it difficult to publish such content on the web in contrast to conventionally stored content such as text, etc.

The History of Flash

Flash was originally developed by the Future Wave company in 1993 when the company decided to develop a completely new kind of animation software. In 1995, Future Wave launched this animation program under the name Smart Sketch. The Macromedia company finally bought Future Wave and continued to develop the software very successfully. In the course of further development of the Flash player, numerous versions have emerged to this day. The Macromedia company was recently bought by the software manufacturer Adobe.