Adobe Flash started as FutureSplash Animator, shipped in May 1996 by FutureWave Software—Jonathan Gay and Charlie Jackson. Macromedia bought the company in December 1996 and renamed the tool Macromedia Flash 1.0. A free Flash Player plugin put compact SWF cartoons on pages that still ran over dial-up. Adobe took the platform when it bought Macromedia on December 3, 2005.
For a decade the Player was the web’s game console. Alien Hominid, Fancy Pants Adventures, and a long tail of Newgrounds and Armor Games titles ran in a rectangle on a page. Portals taught a generation to click through SWF files. YouTube launched on Flash Video. ActionScript (later ActionScript 3 on the AVM2 virtual machine) turned those movies into programs.
Phones ended the run. Steve Jobs kept Flash off iPhone in 2010. Adobe deprecated the Player in 2017 and stopped consumer updates on December 31, 2020; browsers blocked it in January 2021. Adobe Animate still exports to HTML5. Ruffle and similar runtimes keep the old SWF library playable. Flash remains the platform that made browser games ordinary.
Flash Platform Technical Overview
| Component | Specification / Description |
|---|---|
| Developer | FutureWave (1996); Macromedia (1996–2005); Adobe (2005–2020) |
| Initial release | May 1996 (FutureSplash Animator); Macromedia Flash 1.0 in December 1996 |
| Authoring | Macromedia Flash / Adobe Flash Professional; now Adobe Animate |
| Runtime | Flash Player (browser plugin and standalone); Adobe AIR |
| File format | SWF; FLA source; FLV / F4V video |
| Language | ActionScript 1 / 2 (AVM1); ActionScript 3 (AVM2) |
| Graphics | Vector and bitmap; later Stage3D / GPU |
| Typical stage | Flexible; classic default 550×400 |
| End of life | Consumer Flash Player, December 31, 2020 |
| Legacy impact | Browser games, web video, and the early rich-internet-application stack |