A short history of Flash!

Hey people!

Today me and Sureshbabu, got around to talking about a history of flash, and turns out that several of my facts were wrong! It turned out to be quiet in interesting discussion.

Here's a short history of the software to tickle your interest.

1. FutureSplash Animator (Spring 10 April 1996) – initial version of Flash with basic editing tools and a timeline
2. Flash 1 (November 1996) – a Macromedia re-branded version of the FutureSplash Animator
3. Flash 2 (June 1997) – Released with Flash Player 2, new features included: the object library
4. Flash 3 (31 May 1998) – Released with Flash Player 3, new features included: the movieclip element, JavaScript plug-in integration, transparency and an external stand alone player
5. Flash 4 (15 June 1999) – Released with Flash Player 4, new features included: internal variables, an input field, advanced Actionscript, and streaming MP3
6. Flash 5 (24 August 2000) – Released with Flash Player 5, new features included: ActionScript 1.0 (based on ECMAScript, making it very similar to JavaScript in syntax), XML support, Smartclips (the precursor to components in Flash), HTML text formatting added for dynamic text
7. Macromedia Flash MX (ver 6) (15 March 2002) – Released with Flash Player 6, new features included: a video codec (Sorenson Spark), Unicode, v1 UI Components, compression, ActionScript vector drawing API
8. Flash MX 2004 (ver 7) (9 September 2003) – Released with Flash Player 7, new features included: Actionscript 2.0 (which enabled an object-oriented programming model for Flash), behaviors, extensibility layer (JSAPI), alias text support, timeline effects
   Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 (ver 7) (9 September 2003) – Released with Flash Player 7, new features 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), web services integration, video import wizard, Media Playback components (which encapsulate a complete MP3 and/or FLV player in a component that may be placed in a SWF), Data components (DataSet, XMLConnector, WebServicesConnector, XUpdateResolver, etc) and data binding APIs, the Project Panel, v2 UI components, and Transition class libraries.
9. Macromedia Flash Basic 8 (released on 13 September 2005) – 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.
10. Macromedia Flash Professional 8 (released on 13 September 2005) – Released with the Flash Player 8, 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 for text, On2 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.
11. Flash CS3 Professional (as version 9, released on 16 April 2007) – Flash CS3 is the first version of Flash released under the Adobe name. CS3 features full support for ActionScript 3.0, allows tweens to be converted into ActionScript, adds better integration with other Adobe products such as Adobe Photoshop, and also provides better Vector drawing behavior, becoming more similar to Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Fireworks.

cool! huh! I took this down from the ubiquitious wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

You get many more interesting tidbits there. Check it out!

Also, for those who are hungry for more here is the history of flash and how it came around by the inventor of Flash - Jonathan Gay.

until next time then!

ciao.

shauryashaurya

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