At this point, everyone surfing the web has undoubtably encountered Adobe’s Macromedia Flash files (SWF). Flash is everywhere and can be anything. But what is Flash really, and why is it so prevalent?
Flash is a timeline-based software application which allows artists & developers to seamlessly integrate many forms of media into a single presentation. Using Flash, web-authors can present graphics, photos, video, animation, music, sound fx, text and data in one application.

Additionally, the Flash authoring environment is built upon a scripting language known as ActionScript(AS). ActionScript governs the way presentations behave, and custom scripting may be developed to further extend their bounds.

What makes Flash so pervasive is it’s total support by all modern web browsers. This complete level of support provides web-authors with a solid development platform which is uniformly available to the masses.

As the internet evolves, so do the technologies and software that empower it. Flash is at the forefront of this evolution and it is changing the nature of information presentation.