Adobe Flash

• 1. Origins And Evolution

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  In 1993, FutureWave Software released SmartSketch, a vector drawing application designed for pen computers running the PenPoint operating system. The company founders Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay built this tool before the market for such devices collapsed. When PenPoint failed in the marketplace, the team ported their software to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. This pivot allowed them to reach a broader audience of desktop users who needed animation tools.

  The Internet began gaining popularity in the mid-1990s, prompting FutureWave to modify SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features. They released this new product as FutureSplash Animator on both Macintosh and PC platforms in 1995. Adobe Systems turned down an offer to purchase FutureSplash that same year. Instead, Microsoft adopted FutureSplash animated content as a central part of its MSN 2.0 online TV network project. Disney Online used these animations for their subscription-based service called Disney's Daily Blast.

  Macromedia acquired FutureSplash in December 1996 and rebranded it as Macromedia Flash 1.0. The name "Flash" emerged from blending the words Future and Splash. Macromedia distributed the player as a free browser plugin to quickly gain market share. By 2005, more computers worldwide had Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java, QuickTime, RealNetworks, and Windows Media Player.

  Macromedia upgraded the system between 1996 and 1999, adding MovieClips, Actions, Alpha transparency, and other features. As Flash matured, the company shifted focus from marketing it as a graphics tool to promoting it as a Web application platform. In 2000, ActionScript 1.0 was developed and released with Flash 5. This language supported object-oriented programming and improved UI components. The last version released by Macromedia was Flash 8, which focused on graphical upgrades like filters and blend modes.

• 2. Web Dominance Era

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  In the early 2000s, Flash was widely installed on desktop computers and used to display interactive web pages and online games. YouTube was founded by former PayPal employees in 2005 and utilized Adobe Flash Player to display compressed video content on the web. Between 2000 and 2010, numerous businesses used Flash-based websites to launch new products or create interactive company portals. Notable users included Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, General Electric, World Wildlife Fund, HBO, Cartoon Network, Disney, and Motorola.

  Adobe introduced hardware-accelerated 3D for Flash through Stage3D technology, leading to growth in 3D content for product demonstrations and virtual tours. Flash video games became popular on the Internet, with portals like Newgrounds, Kongregate, and Armor Games dedicated to hosting them. Many Flash games were developed by individuals or groups of friends due to the simplicity of the software. Popular titles included Farmville, Alien Hominid, QWOP, Club Penguin, and Dofus.

  Flash also found a niche as the dominant platform for browser games during this period. Developers could create rich internet applications and browser plugin-based applets using ActionScript 3.0 programming language. Tools such as Adobe Flash Builder, FlashDevelop, and Powerflasher FDT helped build these experiences. In 2004, Macromedia Flex was released to target the application development market specifically. It competed with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and Microsoft Silverlight during its tenure.

  Speedtest.net conducted over 9.0 billion speed tests between 2006 and 2016 using a utility built with Adobe Flash. The service shifted to HTML5 in 2016 due to decreasing availability of Flash Player on PCs. Flash was used to build interfaces and HUDs for 3D video games via Scaleform GFx technology. This rendered Flash content within non-Flash video games and supported more than 10 major game engines including Unreal Engine 3 and CryEngine.

• 3. The Apple Conflict

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  In 2010, Steve Jobs wrote an open letter titled Thoughts on Flash criticizing the closed nature of the Flash platform and inherent security problems. He stated that he would not approve the use of Flash on Apple's iOS devices due to numerous security flaws. This decision became known as the death blow to the Flash application on mobile platforms. Adobe created the Adobe AIR environment as a means to appease Apple's concerns and spent time legally fighting Apple over terms of its App Store.

  Apple changed the terms of its Developer License in April 2010 to effectively ban the use of the Flash-to-iPhone compiler. Adobe announced they would make no additional investments in targeting the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5 shortly after. In November 2011, about a year after Jobs' open letter, Adobe announced it would no longer be developing Flash and advised developers to switch to HTML5. The company ended support for Flash on Android later that same year.

  Adobe eventually won legal battles allowing third-party development environments like AIR to access iOS, but Apple's decision to block Flash itself remained a critical turning point. By January 2021, all major browsers were blocking all Flash content unconditionally. Only IE11, niche browser forks, and some browsers built for China continued support. Microsoft released an optional update KB4577586 which removed Flash Player from Windows in July 2021.

• 4. Technical Architecture

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  Flash programs used ActionScript programming language, an enhanced superset of ECMAScript with a classical Java-style class model rather than JavaScript's prototype model. The Flash Player included a virtual machine called the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) for scripting interactivity at run-time. It supported video, MP3-based audio, and bitmap graphics alongside vector rendering engines.

  Flash source files existed in FLA format containing graphics, animation, embedded assets like bitmap images, audio files, and FLV video files. These files could be compiled into SWF movie files using Adobe Animate. Output files had .swf extensions and were traditionally called ShockWave Flash movies or Flash applications. They could be played as web page plug-ins, standalone players, or incorporated into self-executing Projector movies with .exe extensions on Windows systems.

  Vector graphics combined with program code allowed Flash files to remain smaller and use less bandwidth compared to bitmaps or video clips. As of Flash Player 8, it offered two video codecs: On2 Technologies VP6 and Sorenson Spark. The player also supported runtime JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, GIF, and AutoCAD Drawing file formats. Flash Audio was most commonly encoded in MP3 but could also use ADPCM, Nellymoser, and Speex audio codecs.

  Stage3D introduced full 3D shader API support in Flash Player 11, enabling GPU-accelerated rendering within games and applications. Various frameworks built upon Stage3D included Away3D 4, CopperCube, Flare3D, and Starling. Professional game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity exported Flash versions using Stage3D to render 3D graphics.

• 5. Security And Decline

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  For many years, Adobe Flash Player's security record led experts to recommend against installing the player or blocking Flash content entirely. The US-CERT advised users to block Flash, while researcher Charlie Miller recommended not installing it at all. Adobe Flash Player had over 1078 CVE entries, with more than 842 leading to arbitrary code execution. Past vulnerabilities enabled spying via web cameras.

  In July 2015, a series of newly discovered vulnerabilities resulted in Facebook's chief security officer Alex Stamos issuing a call to discontinue the software entirely. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari blacklisted all earlier versions of Flash Player following these discoveries. Security experts predicted the demise of Flash as HTML5 rose in popularity, reducing the need for browser plugins.

  Adobe deprecated Flash in July 2017 and announced its End-Of-Life (EOL) would occur at the end of 2020. Support, distribution, and security updates ceased for Flash Player after that date. By January 2021, all major browsers blocked all Flash content unconditionally except IE11 and niche forks. A built-in kill switch prevented Flash from playing after the 12th of January 2021, excluding China variants.

  Flash cookies also raised privacy concerns. An August 2009 study by Ashkan Soltani found 50% of websites using Flash employed Flash cookies yet rarely disclosed them in privacy policies. Most browsers' cache suppression functions did not affect Flash Player's Local Shared Objects until version 10.2, leaving users unaware their browsing history remained tracked even after deleting HTTP cookies.

• 6. Preservation Efforts

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  As early as 2014, efforts began to preserve existing Flash content through emulation of Flash in open standards while Adobe encouraged developers to transition works to HTML5. Mozilla launched Shumway, an open source project attempting to emulate the Flash standard in HTML5, but it was shuttered when more developers switched to HTML5 than sought to keep content in Flash. Google developed Swiffy application released in 2014 to convert Flash applications to HTML5-compatible scripts before shutting it down in 2016.

  Closer to Flash's EOL date in 2020, concentrated efforts emerged simply to preserve existing Flash applications including websites, video games, and animations beyond Flash's End-Of-Life. In November 2020, the Internet Archive integrated Ruffle within its Emularity system to emulate Flash games and animations without security holes. This opened a new collection for creators and users to save and preserve Flash content.

  By October 2023, the Flashpoint Archive had collected more than 160,000 Flash applications excluding commercial products and offered them as freely available archives for download. Kongregate worked with the Strong Museum of Play to preserve its games. Ruffle, written in Rust and running in web browsers by compiling down to WebAssembly, supported 95% of AS1/2 language and 73% of AS1/2 APIs as of March 2023.