Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash is the authoring environment and Flash Player is the virtual machine used to run the Flash files, but in colloquial language these have become mixed: 'Flash' can mean either the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.
Written and distributed by Adobe, it uses vector and raster graphics, a native scripting language called ActionScript and bidirectional streaming of video and audio. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other Macromedia and third party tools.Īdobe Flash, or simply Flash, can refer to both the Flash Professional multimedia authoring program and the Flash Player plug-in. Īdobe Flash Player was a widely distributed proprietary multimedia and application player created and distributed by Macromedia (a division of Adobe Systems). Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and Pocket PCĬhinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Korean.
Support for Flash expired on December 31, 2020.
