We saw in the “Flash Applications” article a listing of Flash applications, namely, these:
- Flash Media Server on Amazon Web Services™
- Flash Video Streaming Services
Most people become familiar with the brand name “Flash” when they are required to download it embedded in an application, such as “Flash Player” – albeit free – from the Adobe website. Usually, they simply want to view the application or interact with it and be done with things. Periodically, they will get notices to upgrade it, usually because of enhancements or security issues. It is important to accept the request for upgrade, because if there is a security problem, you stand to risk your whole system without installing the patch. This process is just like Adobe Reader, only it is for video.
“Flash” simply isn’t as a stand-a-alone application but is a generic Adobe name that is attached to specific applications. Flash is a multimedia platform, in the same manner as Java, Oracle Database, or BlackBerry operating system. Flash specifically is used to develop content for video, text, audio, animation, and still images. Any of these can be made to be interactive. The applications can be placed in home computers, laptops, on the web, and in mobile devices, such as cell phones, and iPods. Many fields use multimedia, as in education, science, government, and business.
Through propriety computer code Flash manages raster and vector graphics. Images are rendered in pixels on a computer screen, those tiny dots you see that are analogous to the dots in a photograph rendered in a newspaper. Raster graphics is a way of moving pixels about to do image editing. Vector graphics is a mathematical way of manipulating points, curves, lines, and other geometric figures.
In this article, we will be discussing the free applications using Flash. Then, we will be moving on to looking at alternatives to these. Then, we start looking at the applications that cost. First, we need to sort out the advertising fluff and hype from what the Flash program, itself actually does. We should look at the “hype” and products. http://www.adobe.com/products/ .
The free product list, taken from the Adobe site, www.adobe.com consists of the familiar Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR, and, the Adobe Reader. Flash Player lets one view and interact with text, video, and animations on the web. AIR allows those applications to operate independently on the desktop of a web browser, just like a desktop application. It also lets developers create those applications with a software developer’s toolkit (SDK) that can placed in any computer environment or on mobile devices. Adobe claims, “The Adobe® AIR® 2.6 runtime enables developers to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash® Professional software, and ActionScript® to build web applications that run as standalone client applications without the constraints of a browser. [http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/search/index.cfm?term=AIR&siteSection=home&loc=en_us ]“
That is, the difference between AIR and other development software is the inclusion of the Adobe proprietary Flash and ActionScript. An AIR application , developed by a non-Adobe person, is AIRTube Video Downloader that permits a person to download YouTube FLV videos by pasting the YouTube uniform resource locator (URL) into a window of the AIRTube application [http://blog.theflashblog.com/?p=363 ]. The Adobe Reader, perhaps most familiar to everyone, renders documents, including their still images, in portable document format, or “PDF”. People may think that they are stuck with the Flash and AIR applications, and may chafe at using them, especially when they try doing something with the images other than viewing them. In the next article, “Alternatives to Flash Player and AIR”, we will see if there is a way of avoiding the dependencies on Adobe and see why this may be an important issue.
