Adobe Flash - a brief insight into an effective animation tool

Adobe Flash, used in making Flash content, is a multimedia software platform based on a complex vector bases animation tool to create rich multimedia content (including animated content) for a wide variety of applications, most commonly “embedding” in websites. The entire process involves two applications – an environment wherein the Flash content is designed and a Flash player through which the output (usually an animation or a game) is displayed. Few common flash players are Adobe Flash player and Macromedia Flash Player.

Let us now look into the history of Flash:

Before Flash was actually born, a company called FutureWave Software, founded in 1993 developed the first vector graphics application called FutureSplash Animator in May 1996. The same year, FutureSplash was acquired by Macromedia and hence was renamed Flash 1.0. The two parts of the Flash system were now named as Macromedia Flash and Macromedia Flash Player. Initially, Macromedia decided to distribute Flash in the form of a free browser plug-in.

Image depicting the development of Flash

From 1997 to 2005, Macromedia developed various upgrades for Flash 1.0, right until Flash 8, thereby including new features like: JavaScript plugin integration, Alpha transparency, ActionScript(released with Flash 5 and supported Object Oriented Programming), Timeline feature to name a few, thereby shifting the focus of the com[any on the software from being a graphics and media tool to a Web application tool which could be extensively deployed in websites.

Logo of Macromedia Flash 5

In 2005, Flash was acquired by Adobe and rebranded as what-we-know-now, the Adobe Flash Player. Over the years, various new features have been added, some of which are: support for 3D Animation, motion editor effect and GPU-accelerated 3D rendering. In the last few years, Adobe has slowed down the development of Adobe Flash and has decided to phase it out in favor of HTML5, due to the amount of resources required to run Flash content on a machine. 

The ever-popular logo of Adobe Flash Player

Also, Apple decided not to adopt Flash content for iOS due to inherent security flaws of the Flash system. This was a huge blow for Adobe as the move significantly reduced its user base. Finally, in July 2017, Adobe decided that Flash content would longer be supported and distributed from 2020 onwards.

Flash has been installed in almost all the browsers as a plug-in so as to enable playing of Flash content. It is estimated that nearly 99% of the world’s computers having access to Internet have the ability to play Flash content.

The first part of the two-part Flash system – development environment:

Adobe Flash Professional CS 5.5 is a very popular Flash popular development using which Flash content can be created. It is based on Flash 11. Flash files developed are denoted by an extension .swf, which can be played using either Adobe Flash Player or Adobe Shockwave Player. Files developed using ActionScript code have an extension .as.

The Flash Professional application has in-built Drawing tools which make drawing figures very easy. Some of the tools are: Predefined figures with a PolyStar tool (helps to draw Polygons and Stars),Primitive Oval tool and other drawing tools commonly seen in other graphic editors.

The Welcome screen of Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5

Also, Flash CS5.5 provides two approaches for moving objects: classic tweening and motion tweening. Using motion tweening is easier, but it also has certain restrictions, like the code cannot be attached to the animation frame. ActionScript is used to program the actions associated with user interactions.

A simple line of code to embed a flash file in a HTML Document:

<embed width="400" height="50" src="FlashFile.swf">

ActionScript

ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language that is primarily used to program the actions that must occur whenever there is user interaction with Flash content. It is similar to the JavaScript event handlers we use in regular HTML pages to program actions on certain interactions.

ActionScript can be added to a Flash animation in two ways: one, as frame actions, that is, by including the code associated with particular keyframes of the video, and as custom classes, which is a much more complex method. The syntax used here is similar to JavaScript event handler syntax. For eg: 

stopButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent. CLICK, handleClick);

startButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent .CLICK ,handleClick);

are used to determine actions for Stop and Start Buttons.

Applications of Flash:

Flash content is most commonly found on gaming websites like miniclip.com. Adding Flash to websites give them a better look and feel. We also see animated advertisements every now and then when we visit certain websites – these are also created using Flash. The best example for this is Google AdSense. More than anything else, if we want to build a simple animated application ourselves, then I feel using Flash would make it easier to do so. 

Attached below is a simple cricket game made using Flash. Enjoy playing it! (Credits to the creator of that game)

Cricket Games