Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a closed source runtime environment most often embedded into a web page and executed within a web browser. Even though the flash player is closed source, most of the specification has been released, allowing for the creation of open source flash players.

The programming language used to build Flash applications is ActionScript. While the language is based on an open standard, the compiled binaries which are run by the Flash runtime are a proprietary format.

Much of Flash's functionality might be replaced with features added to the fifth revision of the HTML standard. The video element can replace Flash for streaming video. The canvas element can provide space for dynamic image creation using JavaScript. Support for these HTML elements is dependent on the standard being finalized and the major web browsers choosing to implement them.

Issues

• While the web is based mostly on open public standards, Flash files are a close proprietary format. Therefore, they potentially inhibit the growth and openness of the Internet in the future.
• Flash executes with very high (excessive) CPU utilization on the OS X operating system.
• Flash applications, particularly those running on version 9 of the runtime environment, can be prone to crash the OS X operating system.

See Also

• Flixel

References

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