Adobe Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player (labeled Shockwave Flash in Internet Explorer and Firefox)[4] is freeware software for viewing multimedia, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming video and audio, content created on the Adobe Flash platform. Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player has a wide user base, with over 90% penetration on internet connected personal computers, and is a common format for games, animations, and GUIs embedded into web pages. Adobe Systems, the developer of Adobe Flash Player, states that more than 400 million of total more than 1 billion connected desktops update to the new version of Flash Player within six weeks of release. Flash Player can be downloaded for free and its plug-in version is available for recent versions of web browsers (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari) on selected platforms. Google Chrome distribution comes bundled with the sandboxed Adobe Flash plug-in and will continue to support the plug-in in Windows 8 Metro mode. Each version of Adobe Flash Player is backwards-compatible Flash Player can run from a web browser (as a browser plug-in) or on supported mobile devices, and standalone application versions are also available for Windows and Mac OS X, intended primarily for developers. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Flash Professional authoring tool, by Adobe Flex or by a number of other Macromedia and third party tools. Flash Player was created by Macromedia and now developed and distributed by Adobe Systems after its acquisition. Flash Player supports vector and raster graphics, 3D graphics, an embedded scripting language called ActionScript executed in ActionScript Virtual Machine, and streaming of video and audio. ActionScript is based on ECMAScript, and supports object-oriented code, and may be compared to JavaScript. Adobe Flash Player is a runtime that executes and displays content from a provided SWF file, although it has no in-built features to modify the SWF file at runtime. It can execute software written in the ActionScript programming language which enables the runtime manipulation of text, data, vector graphics, raster graphics, sound and video. The player can also access certain connected hardware devices, including web cameras and microphones, after permission for the same has been granted by the user. Flash Player is used internally by the Adobe Integrated Runtime (Adobe AIR), in order to provide a cross-platform runtime environment for desktop applications and mobile applications. Adobe AIR supports installable applications on Windows, Linux, OS X, and some mobile operating systems such as iOS and Android. Flash applications must specifically be built for the Adobe AIR runtime in order to utilize additional features provided, such as file system integration, native client extensions, native window/screen integration, taskbar/dock integration, and hardware integration with connected Accelerometer and GPS devices