Flash

Introduction

Flash is a multimedia format developed by Macromedia . Adobe Flash or Macro-media Flash basically adds multimedia and animation to web page. By it can be advertisement. It is a cross-platform browser-based application. It works at runtime. It delivers uncompressed viewing of expressive applications, content.

Benefits

• Support for mobile devices
• Mobile-ready features for unprecedented creative control
• Hardware acceleration
• Expanded options for high-quality media delivery
• It is a powerful design and animation authoring tool
• an object-oriented dynamic scripting engine
• bitmap rendering anti-aliasing precision and advanced audio and video playback
• Macromedia has added an amazing number of new features and capabilities to Flash with each release
• Flash can outperform all other game-development platforms with its hands tied behind its back
• Flash is a good choice if you want your game to be available on the Internet
• Small file size
• Plug-in penetration
• Server-side integration
• File sharing between programmer and graphic artists/designers
• Ease of use

Limitations:

• lack of comunication to the OS
• lack of "stand-alone" server to flash to server abilities
• Lack of 3D support
• Lack of operating-system integration
• Infeasible Game Features
• 3D rendering with texture mapping
• Texture mapping

Timeline by player version

• Flash Player 2: Adobe released Flash Player 2 firstly with scripting support. It supports         some timeline controls as gotoAndPlay, gotoAndStop, nextFrame and nextScene .

• Flash Player 3: Adobe expanded basic scripting support of Flash Player 2. It expaned ability were to load external SWFs. SWF is movable. Adobe released this version as Flash Player 3.

• Flash Player 4: Adobe expanded the scripting support with for loops, conditionals,variavles and other basic language constructors. This scripting named as ActionScripting. Adobe released this version as Flash Player 4.

• Flash Player 5: Adobe further improve there ActionScript including protype-based programming based on ECMAScript . It also allowed procedural programming as well as object-oriented programming. This version named as Flash Player 5.

• Flash Player 6: Flash Player 6 is an event handling model. It has accessibility controls and support for switch and AMF, RTMP protocol. AMF and RTMP controls allow for on demand audio/video treaming. Adobe named this version as Flash Player 6.

• Flash Player 7: This version included CSS for ActionScript 2.0. It is a programming language. It is based on ECMAScript 4 Netscape Proposal with class-based inheritance. This language can run in Flash Player 6.

• Flash Player 8: In this version extended extended ActionScript 1/ActionScript 2. It added some new features class library with API. This feature actually is controlling bitmap data at run-time. It also included file uploades and live filters for blur and dropshadow.

• Flash Player 9: This version initially called Flash Player 8.5. AVM2 was included in this version. It also supported AVM1. Its aso included new JIT compiler. Some interesting features were added like binary sockets, E4X XML parsing, TR1 = LIXO full-screen mode and Regular Expressions. This version titled as Adobe Flash Player.
• Flash Player 10: This version initially called Astro. In this version added an interesting         feature 3D manipulation. For example rotating on the X, Y, and Z axis, and a 3D drawing API.     It has ability to create custom filters using Adobe Pixel Bender. Flash Player 10 are now         offering some features like GPU. It gives a noticeable decrease to rendering time for each         frame, resulting in higher frame rates, especially with H.264 video.  This version also included     audio by new sound API.

Flash Lite

• Flash Lite 1.0: Flash Lite 1.0 is same as Flash 4 ActionScript. It is specially designed for mobile phone and consumer electronics devices.

• Flash Lite 1.1: All thing of Flash Lite 1.0 is supported by Flash Lite 1.1 and more one feature API.

• Flash Lite 2.0 and 2.1: It supports Flash 7 ActionScript, fscommand2 API and all of Flash Lite 1.1.

• Flash Lite 3: It supports Flash 8 ActionScript, FLV video playback and all features of Flash Lite 2.0 and 2.1.

• Flash Lite 4: Added support for Flash 10 ActionScript 3.0.