Flash
The Adobe Flash which is commonly called Shockwave Flash or Flash is developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. It essentially refers to the Adobe Flash Player and the Adobe Flash Professional Multimedia authoring program.
While the latter is used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform i.e. games, movies, web applications, mobile phone content etc, the former is a client application available in almost all the web browsers. It features support for vector and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video. The Flash player is essentially a virtual machine which is used to run or parse flash files. The Adobe Flash Professional on the other hand is an integrated development environment.
Uses of Flash
The SWF (flash format) can be played within the entire browser window or may occupy certain space within the page like a "jpg" or "gif" image file. It is fairly lightweight and hence can be quickly downloaded while being feature rich and can deliver much more than just animated banners. Users are free to download to download its latest version anytime, completely free of cost. Due to the amazing ubiquity of Flash, it now comes as an inherent or in built component of the operating system or browser software.
Advantages of Flash
The main USP of Flash is that it is platform and browser independent. Put in simple words, this implies that the same Flash movie will appear the same in Mac, Windows, Unix, Internet Explorer, Opera or Netscape. Each platform therefore possesses its very own Flash player version which in turn reduces development costs for users and offers ample convenience to the developers as well. Furthermore, while maintaining its optimum quality, it produces small file sizes. The graphics files are relatively smaller than gif and jpeg.
Used by both developers and designers
The Flash movies can be created by both designers as well as developers. So, say for example while the role of the designer is to use the Macromedia MX tool to create animations and graphics, the role of the developer would involve perhaps making the movie more interactive or maybe program certain segments to make the file size smaller. A language called Actionscript allows Macromedia MX developers to achieve this. Flash is therefore commonly used for media rich presentations and/or animations. It also involves its dynamic communication with the server. Flash is also used to build enterprise web applications. An effective strategy involves the combination of Flash and HTML in a website. With HTML pages as the entry point, access to more complex Flash based presentations can be achieved. Informational resources however do not utilize the Flash based functionality as it can take a long time to download and display this content, especially without a DSL connection. It is therefore best suited for promotional or media content.
Outsourcing Flash requirements
In order to get high impact and professional Flash based presentations, clients can outsource their Flash project requirements for the single most compelling reason that they get to exploit global expertise within the budget frame that suits them best.
