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Definition: flash


(1) The most common non-volatile storage technology. See flash memory.

(2) A telephone button. See flash button.

(3) To install a different mobile OS. See Android ROM.

(4) (Flash) A multimedia authoring and playback system from Adobe. Flash content is created in authoring applications, such as Flash MX and Flash Professional, and viewed in any computer that has the Adobe Flash Player installed. Flash animations support space-efficient vector images, which download quickly; a feature that helped catapult Flash to success when dial-up access was the norm (see vector graphics).

Once the primary format for animations and video clips on the Web, Flash was never permitted on Apple's mobile devices. Many sites, including YouTube, switched from Flash to HTML5 for multimedia. In addition, Google dropped the built-in Flash player for Android in 2012. See HTML5.

Animations Are Choreographed
To create an animation, the Flash designer imports graphics, sound and video elements created in other applications, places them on sequential timelines and defines their interaction. The timelines and elements are saved in an .FLA source file and published to an .SWF file for playback (see SWF).

Flash Movies: Animations and Video
Flash also provides a video format that uses the .FLV extension. Although animations in Flash (SWFs) are technically "Flash movies," and videos in Flash (FLVs) are "Flash videos," both are called "Flash movies." SWF files may contain some video, but FLV files are all video. See Flash video.

Flash Applications
As of Flash Version 5, Flash became fully programmable, enabling the creation of interactive Web-based applications (see Flex). Flash was created by Macromedia and introduced in 1996. In 2005, Adobe acquired the company.




Animation Authoring
Objects are placed in separate timelines that move in sequence. Although this software has basic drawing and painting tools (top left), multimedia elements are typically imported.