Adobe Flash Professional is a multimedia authoring program used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform

Adobe Engagement Platform

At Adobe MAX 2008, Adobe announced the new Flash Platform concept, and this has replaced the branding formerly known as Adobe Engagement Platform.In 2005, Adobe Systems bought Macromedia. The Adobe Engagement Platform was the announced name of the product line resulting from the merger of...

, such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices.

History

Adobe Flash Professional is the successor of a software product known as FutureSplash Animator, a vector graphics

Vector graphics

Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...

 and vector animations program released in May 1996. FutureSplash Animator was developed by FutureWave Software

FutureWave Software

FutureWave Software was a software developer and publisher based in San Diego, California. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay in early 1993. VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from Silicon Beach Software, then Aldus....

, a small software company whose first product, SmartSketch, was a vector-based drawing program for pen-based computers. In 1995, the company decided to add animation capabilities to their product and to create a vector-based animation platform for World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

; hence FutureSplash Animator was created. Initially, the only way to deploy such animations on the web was through the use of Java platform; however, the Java platform was later replaced with the Netscape

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

's plug-in architecture. The FutureSplash animation technology was used on several notable websites such as MSN

MSN

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

, the official The Simpsons

The Simpsons

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

website and Disney Daily Blast of The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...

.

In December 1996, Macromedia

Macromedia

Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...

 bought FutureWave and so re-branded and released FutureSplash Animator as Macromedia Flash v1.0. In 2005, Adobe Systems acquired Macromedia; subsequently, in 2007, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, the next version of Macromedia Flash was released.

Versions

Release	Year	Description
FutureSplash Animator	1996	Initial version of Flash with basic editing tools and a timeline
Macromedia Flash 1	1996	A re-branded version of the FutureSplash Animator
Macromedia Flash 2	1997	Released with Flash Player 2, new features included: the object library Library (computer science) In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software. These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications....
Macromedia Flash 3	1998	Released with Flash Player 3, new features included: the movieclip element, JavaScript JavaScript JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....  plug-in integration, transparency Transparency (graphic) Transparency is possible in a number of graphics file formats. The term transparency is used in various ways by different people, but at its simplest there is "full transparency" i.e. something that is completely invisible. Of course, only part of a graphic should be fully transparent, or there...  and an external stand alone player
Macromedia Flash 4	1999	Released with Flash Player 4, new features included: internal variables Variable (programming) In computer programming, a variable is a symbolic name given to some known or unknown quantity or information, for the purpose of allowing the name to be used independently of the information it represents... , an input field, advanced ActionScript, and streaming Streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...  MP3
Macromedia Flash 5	2000	Released with Flash Player 5, new features included: ActionScript 1.0 (based on ECMAScript, making it very similar to JavaScript in syntax), XML XML Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....  support, Smartclips (the precursor to components in Flash), HTML HTML HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....  text formatting added for dynamic text
Macromedia Flash MX(6)	2002	Released with Flash Player 6, new features included: a video codec Codec A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...  (Sorenson Spark), Unicode Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems... , v1 UI Components Widget engine In computer software, a widget engine is a software service available to users for running and displaying applets on a graphical user interface, such as that of the desktop.The widget model in widget engines is attractive because of ease of development... , compression Data compression In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use.... , ActionScript vector drawing API
Macromedia Flash MX 2004(7)	2003	Released with Flash Player 7, new features included: Actionscript 2.0 (which enabled an object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programs. Programming techniques may include features such as data abstraction,...  model for Flash, although it lacked the Script assist function of other versions, meaning Actionscript could only be typed out manually), behaviors, extensibility layer (JSAPI), alias text support, timeline effects. Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 included all Flash MX 2004 features, plus: Screens (forms for non-linear state-based development and slides for organizing content in a linear slide format like PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system... ), web service Web service A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format... s integration, video import wizard, Media Playback components (which encapsulate a complete MP3 and/or FLV player in a component that may be placed in an SWF), Data components (DataSet, XMLConnector, WebServicesConnector, XUpdateResolver, etc.) and data binding APIs, the Project Panel, v2 UI components, and Transition class libraries.
Macromedia Flash 8	2005	Macromedia Flash Basic 8, a less feature-rich version of the Flash authoring tool targeted at new users who only want to do basic drawing, animation and interactivity. Released with Flash Player 8, this version of the product has limited support for video and advanced graphical and animation effects. Macromedia Flash Professional 8 added features focused on expressiveness, quality, video, and mobile authoring. New features included Filters and blend modes, easing control for animation, enhanced stroke properties (caps and joins), object-based drawing mode, run-time bitmap caching, FlashType advanced anti-aliasing Saffron Type System The Saffron Type System is a system for rendering high-quality scalable type on digital displays. Developed by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories , Saffron is built on a core of adaptively-sampled distance field technology...  for text, On2 On2 Technologies On2 Technologies , formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly-traded company , headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designs video codec technology. They created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion...  VP6 advanced video codec, support for alpha transparency in video, a stand-alone encoder and advanced video importer, cue point support in FLV files, an advanced video playback component, and an interactive mobile device emulator.
Adobe Flash CS3(9) Professional	2007	Flash CS3 is the first version of Flash released under the Adobe name. CS3 features full support for ActionScript 3.0, allows entire applications to be converted into ActionScript, adds better integration with other Adobe products such as Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop... , and also provides better Vector drawing behavior, becoming more like Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....  and Adobe Fireworks.
Adobe Flash CS4(10) Professional	2008	Contains inverse kinematics Inverse kinematics Inverse kinematics is a subdomain of kinematics, which is of particular interest in robotics and computer animation. In contrast to forward kinematics, which calculates the position of a body after a series of motions, inverse kinematics calculates the motions necessary to achieve a desired...  (bones), basic 3D Three-dimensional space Three-dimensional space is a geometric 3-parameters model of the physical universe in which we live. These three dimensions are commonly called length, width, and depth , although any three directions can be chosen, provided that they do not lie in the same plane.In physics and mathematics, a...  object manipulation, object-based animation, a text engine, and further expansions to ActionScript 3.0. CS4 allows the developer to create animations with many features absent in previous versions.
Adobe Flash Professional CS5(10.1)	2010	Flash CS5 was released on April 12, 2010 and launched for trialling and normal buying on April 30, 2010. Flash CS5 Professional includes support for publishing iPhone IPhone The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...  applications. However, on April 8, 2010 Apple changed the terms of its Developer License to effectively ban the use of the Flash-to-iPhone compiler and on April 20, 2010 Adobe announced that they will be making no additional investments in targeting the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5. Other features of Flash CS5 are a new text engine (TLF), further improvement to inverse kinematics Inverse kinematics Inverse kinematics is a subdomain of kinematics, which is of particular interest in robotics and computer animation. In contrast to forward kinematics, which calculates the position of a body after a series of motions, inverse kinematics calculates the motions necessary to achieve a desired... , and the Code Snippets panel.

External links

• Adobe Flash Professional