One of the most significant developments in this area was the rapid proliferation of a graphics approach called Flash. A product of Macromedia Inc. (which Adobe Systems Inc. acquired last month), Flash enabled developers and artists to create sophisticated, frame-by-frame animation that included sound and could be streamed out to a browser. Such "movies" were relatively small and thus would download quickly.
Flash is built around vector graphics (such as PostScript, SVG and PDF files) that, when used with program code, are translated into small file sizes for Flash productions that require less transmission bandwidth than bitmaps or video clips. Besides the vector-rendering engine, the Flash Player includes the ActionScript Virtual Machine for scripting interactivity at runtime, support for video, MP3-based audio and bitmap graphics. The Flash format interleaves media and instructions so graphics start playing more quickly.
Flash players exist for a wide variety of systems and devices, so Flash movies will run consistently on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS 9/X, Linux, and Unix variants such as Solaris, HP-UX, Pocket PC, OS/2, Symbian, Palm OS, BeOS and Irix. An open-source Flash player has been ported to numerous operating systems, including Amiga. Flash Player 8 offers two video coder/decoders and runtime support for several other graphics formats, including JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG and GIF.
Going pro
With its recent 8.0 release, Flash has been split into two products, one of which is a professional edition aimed at developers doing graphics-intensive work. From the beginning, Flash has used a timeline-based approach to defining what happens on-screen and when. Flash Pro 8 adds a forms-based method for creating Flash applications, through which developers can drag and drop items, as they can in many other integrated development environments, including Microsoft Visual Studio .Net and IBM's VisualAge family.
Flash includes server connectivity features that give it scriptable data binding for Simple Object Access Protocol Web services and XML, helping developers connect Flash applications to remote services. Flash's video editing and encoding capabilities have been enhanced, and several plug-ins allow integration with popular third-party editing tools. The ActionScript language used with Flash is at Version 2.0, and the package now supports Cascading Style Sheets.
Having lots of animation can mean big files, which translates into longer download and start times. Flash's popularity has been driven in large part by the small size of Flash files and the relative ease of development. One way that Flash accomplishes this is with "tweened" animation, where the artist specifies key frames as completely as needed and then lets the software automatically generate the frames in between. The result is that, compared with many other plug-ins (including Java, Acrobat Reader, QuickTime or Windows Media), the Flash Player is quite small and initializes very quickly.
Another reason for Flash's wide use is the fact that it's a relatively open and stable format. Macromedia has released the specifications of the basic Flash file format, and thus a number of third-party tools have been created to work with and create Flash movies.
Flash's vector-based graphics are drawn with mathematical formulas; when you resize a vector-based image, its formula is recalculated to produce a scaled version of the image without distortion, which can be introduced when scaling bit-mapped images.
History of Flash
In 1995, a small software start-up, FutureWave Software Inc., decided to add animation capabilities to its pen-based computing graphics package. The advent of the plug-in application programming interface for Netscape Communications Corp.'s browser enabled it to achieve decent performance, and FutureSplash Animator was brought onto the market in 1996. Its timing was good, and two important and developing Web sites adopted the new animation technology -- Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Disney Online.
The Walt Disney Co. was also working with Macromedia's Shockwave package, and it was through Disney that Macromedia learned enough about the compact animation tool to want it for itself. In December 1996, FutureWave Software was sold to Macromedia, and FutureSplash Animator became Macromedia Flash 1.0.
Flash has since become synonymous with Internet animation, and its creator, Jonathan Gay, opines that Flash Player may now be the Internet's most widely distributed piece of software, with more users than Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Real Player.
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Third-party tools
Besides the Macromedia products, numerous other graphics packages use the Flash format and can create Flash movies:
-- FlashCooker is a free Flash creation tool, available at http:// flashcooker.com/.
-- AnFX offers Flash interactive intros, menus and text effects without the need to learn scripting; visit www.stepaheadsoftware.com/.
-- On2 Flix is a set of video encoding tools available at www.on2.com/.
-- SwishMax is a cheaper alternative for achieving Flash effects, available from www.swishzone.com/.
-- KineticFusion, at www.kinesissoftware.com, represents Flash as XML.
-- OpenLaszlo, at www.openlaszlo.org, is an open-source tool that compiles XML plus JavaScript to Flash.
-- GplFlash is another open-source Flash decoder and plug-in, available at http://gplflash.sourceforge.net/.
-- MTASC is an open-source ActionScript compiler; you can download it at http://mtasc.org/.
-- Kay is a Computerworld contributing writer in Worcester, Mass. You can contact him at russkay@charter.net.