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The Adobe Flash Player is a widely distributed proprietary multimedia and
application player created by Macromedia and now developed and distributed by
Adobe after its acquisition. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by
the Adobe Flash authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other Macromedia
and third party tools.
Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both a multimedia authoring program and
the Adobe Flash Player, written and distributed by Adobe, that uses vector and
raster graphics, a native scripting language called ActionScript and
bidirectional streaming of video and audio. Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash is
the authoring environment and Flash Player is the virtual machine used to run
the Flash files, but in colloquial language these have become mixed: "Flash" can
mean either the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.
Flash Player has support for an embedded scripting language called
ActionScript (AS), which is based on ECMAScript. Since its inception,
ActionScript has matured from a script syntax without variables to one that
supports object-oriented code, and may now be compared in capability to
JavaScript (another ECMAScript-based scripting language).
The Flash Player was originally designed to display 2-dimensional vector
animation, but has since become suitable for creating rich Internet applications
and streaming video and audio. It uses vector graphics to minimize file size and
create files that save bandwidth and loading time. Flash is a common format for
games, animations, and GUIs embedded into web pages.
The Flash Player is built into some browsers and is available as a plugin for
recent versions of other browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and
Internet Explorer) on selected platforms. Each version of the plugin is
completely backwards-compatible.
The latest version of Flash Player, Version 10, is available for Windows
(2000 and newer, Win9x no longer supported), Linux (x86-32 only), Solaris and
Mac OS X. Version 7 is the most recent official version currently available for
the Linux/ARM-based Nokia 770/N800 Internet Tablets, classic Mac OS, Pocket PC
and Windows 95/NT. HP offers Version 6 of the player for HP-UX.[3] Other
versions of the player have been available at some point for OS/2, Symbian OS,
Palm OS, BeOS and IRIX. The Kodak Easyshare One includes Flash Player. The Flash
Player SDK was used to develop its on-screen menus, which are rendered and
displayed using the included Flash Player. Among other devices, LeapFrog
Enterprises provides Flash Player with their Leapster Multimedia Learning System
and extended the Flash Player with touch-screen support. Sony has integrated
Flash Player 6 into the PlayStation Portable's web browser via firmware version
2.70 and Flash Player 9 into the PlayStation 3's web browser in firmware version
2.50. Nintendo has integrated Flash Player 7 in the Internet Channel on the Wii.
No x86-64 editions of the Flash player are currently available for any platform
, due to the x86-32-specific garbage collector and just-in-time compilation
engine . Adobe engineers have stated that 64-bit editions for all supported
platforms, including Linux, are in development . They have been developing since
2005 a x64 edition of the Flash Player, but have yet to launch.
Although SWF has recently become an open format again, Adobe has not been
willing to make complete source code available for free software development.
The source code for the ActionScript Virtual Machine has been released as a
project named Tamarin under the terms of an MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license. It
includes the specification for the ActionScript byte code format. This project
is jointly managed by Mozilla and Adobe. The full specification of the SWF
format is available without restriction by Adobe. The principal alternative free
software player, gnash, is quite incomplete at this time, however since SWF is
now an open format, it should have a much higher quality going forward as
developers implement the official SWF specifications.
Flash Player is an application that, while running on a computer that is
connected to the internet, is designed to contemporaneously interact with
websites containing Flash content that are being visited online. As such, under
certain configurations the application has the potential to silently compromise
its users' internet privacy, and do so without their knowledge. By default,
Flash Player is configured to permit small, otherwise invisible "tracking"
files, known as Persistent Identification Elements (PIEs) or Local Shared Object
files, to be stored on the hard drive of a user's computer. Sent in the
background over the internet from websites to which a user is connected, these
files work much the way "cookies" do with internet browsers. When stored on a
user's computer, PIE (.sol) files are capable of sending personally sensitive
data back out over the internet without the user's knowledge to one or more
third parties. In addition, Flash Player is also capable of accessing and
retrieving audio and video data from any microphone and/or webcams that might be
either built in or connected to a user's computer and transmitting it in
realtime over the internet (also potentially without the user's knowledge) to
one or more third parties.
While these capabilities can all be affirmatively blocked and/or disabled by the
user, the Flash Player application does not provide an internally accessible
"preferences" panel to accomplish this. Instead access to the various settings
panels necessary to manage the application's "Privacy," "Storage," "Security,"
and "Notifications" settings can be achieved through a web-based "Settings
Manager" page located on the "support" section of the Adobe.com website, or by
third party tools (see Local Shared Object). Each of the functions can be
enabled/disabled either "globally" to cover all websites, or set differently for
individual websites depending on how the user desires Flash Player to be able to
interact with each one.
Although Flash Control Panel Settings in theory allow users to protect their
privacy it should be remembered that suitably crafted Visual Basic Script or
similar code can overwrite any user defined settings before the Flash Player
Plug-in is called by a webpage.
In addition to cookies, many banks and other financial institutions also
routinely install Persistent Identification Elements using Flash Player on
users' hard drives when they establish and access their accounts, as do other
interactive sites such as "YouTube".
History
Macromedia Flash Player 2 (1997)
Macromedia Flash Player 3 (1998)
Macromedia Flash Player 4 (May 1999)
Macromedia Flash Player 5 (August 2000)
Macromedia Flash Player 6 (version 6.0.21.0, codenamed Exorcist)
(March 2002)
Macromedia Flash Player 7 (version 7.0.14.0, codenamed Mojo) (September
2003)
Macromedia Flash Player 8 (version 8.0.22.0, codenamed Maelstrom) (August 2005)
Macromedia Flash Lite 1.0 and 1.1
Macromedia Flash Lite 2.0 (December 2005)
Adobe Flash Player 9 (version 9.0.15.0, codenamed Zaphod) (June 2006) previously
named Flash Player 8.5
Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 1 (version 9.0.28.0, codenamed Marvin) (November
2006)
Adobe Flash Lite 2.1 (December 2006)
Adobe Flash Lite 3 (Announced on February 2007)
Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 2 (version Mac/Windows 9.0.47.0 and Linux 9.0.48.0,
codenamed Hotblack) (July 2007)
Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 (version 9.0.115.0, codenamed Moviestar or
Frogstar) (December 2007)
Adobe Flash Player 9 (version 9.0.124.0, codenamed Vogon) (April 2008)
Adobe Flash Player 10 (version 10.0.12.36, codenamed Astro) (Oct 2008)
Source: Wikipedia
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