During this huge time span the actions performed by Flash has been enhanced to exponential levels integrating various website related tasks such as Menus built by Flash developers. Pinning advertisements to web pages, animating content, adding widgets and embedding videos into web pages are some examples of tasks performed using Adobe Flash by Flash programmers.
Capabilities of Flash and its Developers
The ability of Flash to manipulate both raster and vector graphics in a page is its specialty which enables Flash to support bi-directional video and audio streaming. Such new innovative techniques have enabled Flash developers to embed animations, interactive movies and virtual tours which were not possible earlier before Adobe Flash was introduced. In the hands of a proficient Flash developer or a Flash programmer a website can get the most stylish and attractive look using Adobe Flash.
ActionScipts Efficiency
Flash developers use a scripting language called ActionScript. This poses the first test to any programmer intending to turn into a Flash programmer to develop rich multimedia content using Adobe Flash. The learning curve for a Flash developer to become proficient in ActionScript is pretty steep and acute understanding has to be attained before high quality content can be produced by them. Once a Flash developer becomes competent enough in ActionScript then the content developed will be of high quality and will be playable in any computer platform.
Adobe Flash Player is now the most popular and most used application to play Flash content in Web Browsers. This application gets reviewed constantly and gets regular updates, sometimes even more than once a week and for mobile devices there is a slightly smaller version called Flash Lite.
Flash File Types
The SWF files are used to incorporate Flash files into websites; these files are also called as ShockWave files. These files are added by Flash programmers in a webpage in the form of objects and they are also given the file extension of .swf. Flash videos are separate files but are a part of the ShockWave objects and they have an extension of .flv. These files are normally played using the inbuilt Flash player in the web browser or they can also be played using flv aware players such as VLC, Quicktime, and Windows Media Player etc.
The Common Mans Gateway
Flash has been considered as the common mans gateway to add multimedia content such as animation, videos etc. This is because of Flashs nature of being a simple platform and when programmers get experienced with it the time taken for them to develop highly enhanced sites become comparatively very less. Due to this reduce in effort the cost of developing interactive sites has come down drastically. The work force for Flash programming and the number of Flash programmers have increased threefold.