Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player (labeled Shockwave Flash in Internet Explorer and Firefox) is computer software for using content created on the Adobe Flash platform, including viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video.

End-users can view Flash content via Flash Player (for web browsers), AIR (for desktop or mobile apps) or third-party players such as Scaleform (for video games).

Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices.

(These are a different type of software module than browser extensions.) Two plug-in examples are the Adobe Flash Player for playing videos and a Java virtual machine for running applets.

Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Flash Builder or by third party tools such as FlashDevelop.

The resulting applications run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR, on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Android or iOS.

Adobe Flash Player (labeled Shockwave Flash in Internet Explorer and Firefox) is computer software for using content created on the Adobe Flash platform, including viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video.

Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free of charge for common web browsers, some mobile phones and a few other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).

Flash Player supports persistent local storage of data (also referred to as Local Shared Objects), which can be used similarly to HTTP cookies or Web Storage in web applications.

Local shared objects have been used by all versions of Flash Player (developed by Macromedia, which was later acquired by Adobe Systems) since version 6.

Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer.

Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 8 and later, and Microsoft Edge come bundled with a sandboxed Adobe Flash plug-in.

Major items in the Release Preview included the addition of Sports, Travel, and News apps, along with an integrated version of Adobe Flash Player in Internet Explorer.

AMF was introduced with Flash Player 6, and this version is referred to as AMF0.

Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 8 and later, and Microsoft Edge come bundled with a sandboxed Adobe Flash plug-in.

The browser includes an integrated Adobe Flash Player (with an internal whitelist allowing Flash applets on Facebook websites to load automatically, bypassing all other security controls requiring user activation) and a PDF reader.

Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Flash Builder or by third party tools such as FlashDevelop.

Adobe makes available plugins, such as Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Integrated Runtime, to play SWF files in web browsers on many desktop operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux on the x86 architecture and ARM architecture (Google Chrome OS only).

Previously, viewing YouTube videos on a personal computer required the Adobe Flash Player plug-in to be installed in the browser.

Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 8 and later, and Microsoft Edge come bundled with a sandboxed Adobe Flash plug-in.

A significant number of security vulnerabilities in Chrome occur in the Adobe Flash Player.

This server works with the Flash Player runtime to create media driven, multiuser RIAs (Rich Internet Applications).

It is also widely used by streaming Internet sources, such as videos from Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Vimeo, YouTube, and the iTunes Store, Web software such as the Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight, and also various HDTV broadcasts over terrestrial (ATSC, ISDB-T, DVB-T or DVB-T2), cable (DVB-C), and satellite (DVB-S and DVB-S2) systems.

A significant change came in version 11, which added a new low-level API called Stage3D (initially codenamed Molehill), which provides full GPU acceleration, similar to WebGL.

In computing, Stage3D (codenamed Molehill ) is an Adobe Flash Player API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration, within Flash games and applications.

Adobe Flash Player (labeled Shockwave Flash in Internet Explorer and Firefox) is computer software for using content created on the Adobe Flash platform, including viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video.

In addition, web pages can integrate widgets known as ActiveX controls which run on Windows only but have vast potentials to extend the content capabilities; Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight are examples.

Although code written in ActionScript 3 executes up to 10 times faster than the prior ActionScript 2, the Adobe ActionScript 3 compiler is a non-optimizing compiler, and produces inefficient bytecode in the resulting SWF, when compared to toolkits such as CrossBridge.

CrossBridge is an open-source toolset developed by Adobe Systems, that cross-compiles C and C++ code to run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR.

Flash Player is used internally by the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), to provide a cross-platform runtime environment for desktop applications and mobile applications.

A Flash Player or HTML5 application used in a browser does not require installation, while AIR applications require installation from an installer file (Windows and OS X) or the appropriate App Store (iOS and Android).

Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Flash Builder or by third party tools such as FlashDevelop.

Animations may be published for HTML5, WebGL, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) animation and spritesheets, and legacy Flash Player (SWF) and Adobe AIR formats.

* Understanding Flash Player with Adobe Scout – an article discussing the internals of the player and the Adobe Scout profiling tool

Adobe Scout is a visual profiler for Adobe Flash content running on desktop or mobile platforms, and works together with Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.

Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by Adobe Flash Professional, Adobe Flash Builder or by third party tools such as FlashDevelop.

The Flex 4 development environment was rebranded from Adobe Flex Builder to Adobe Flash Builder, to indicate it produces applications for Adobe Flash Player, and is not a separate platform.

Flash Player was created by Macromedia and has been developed and distributed by Adobe Systems since Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005.

Adobe's Flash Player has also been criticized for, among other things, suffering from performance, memory usage and security problems (see criticism of Flash Player).

As of 2012, the Haxe multiplatform language can build programs for Flash Player that perform faster than the same application built with the Adobe Flex SDK compiler.

The Haxe language can compile into bytecode for different virtual machines such as the Adobe Flash Player, HashLink and Neko, and can generate source code in C#, C++, ActionScript 3, JavaScript and Lua

Nintendo has integrated Flash Lite 3.1, equivalent to Flash 8, in the Internet Channel on the Wii.

Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems for viewing Flash content.