As a software platform for the production and display of interactive multimedia content, Adobe Flash changed the look of the internet. The technology, originally developed by Macromedia, enables the animation of text and image elements to deliver videos, games, and interactive applications through a web browser. Flash supports a bi-directional streaming of audio and video content — also in 3D since 2011 – and accepts user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Interactive Flash animation programming uses the object-oriented programming language ActionScript. A graphical approach is also offered by the Flash authoring environment Animate CC (formerly Flash Professional). For the creation of video games and applications for in-browser use, desktop computers, or mobile devices, Adobe developed the cross-platform runtime environment AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime).
Flash-based projects are delivered in the proprietary file format Shockwave Flash (SWF). This contains the Flash animation in a compressed binary form. The specification of this format was released by Adobe as part of the Adobe Open Screen Project in 2008. But SWF doesn’t meet the criteria of an open standard.
On the user side, SWF files require the implementation of an application programming interface (API), which is integrated into the web browser in the form of a plugin. The most popular distribution was Adobe’s in-house Flash Player. In the early years of the 21st century, Flash dominated almost the entire net when it came to animated advertisements, interactive live tickers, menus, mini-games, or video players. This development was promoted using popular video portals — mainly YouTube, which used a Flash plugin for a long time.