Flash Players play animation, video and interactive content
A Flash Player is any program that can play Flash files. Flash files include animation, video, interactive games, navigation components and even entire websites. Flash files generally have either ".swf" or ".flv" extension. FLV files are for Flash Video, but SWF files can contain many different types of content. When you browse the Web, you will come across Flash files regularly, and may not have been aware that a Flash Player was displaying them.
Files
Flash files can be viewed in a Flash Player program, either individually on a desktop or laptop computer or within the browser while viewing a Web page. Most Flash content is deployed over the Web, so HTML pages contain embedded SWF and FLV files. In some cases Flash content is obvious, for example if it is a video, an animation or an advertisement. However, in many cases you may not even be aware of it, as your browser's Flash Player Plugin will automatically play it.
Official Player
The official Adobe Flash Player is the most commonly used one and is free to download. Adobe Flash Player is available for operating systems including Windows, Mac and Linux, and is installed on almost all computers used by people with Internet access. Flash Player can run individual Flash files as a standalone application or can run as a Plugin within the Web browser for Internet content. Flash Player functions within many browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.
Versions
New versions of the official Flash Player are released regularly, and each version typically includes additional functionality. Improvements over time have included increased support for advanced audio and video encoding as well as different multimedia formats, improved support for different hardware devices such as tablet PCs and mobile devices, improved text input, streaming and user interaction through multitouch and gesture.
Alternatives
There are alternatives to the official Adobe Flash Player. Among the most widely known options are three open source programs: Gnash, Swfdec and Lightspark. Gnash can run as a standalone or embedded program and is available for many different operating systems. Swfdec can also be run on its own or within the Firefox Web browser. Lightspark is designed as a high performance program, and can run with Firefox and Chrome.
Availability
The availability of Flash playback is restricted in some contexts. Mobile devices such as tablet PCs, handheld computers and smartphones often do not have the ability to run Flash. In particular, many Apple products have dropped support for Flash media content. Since increasing numbers of people are now accessing websites on these types of device, this means that content requiring the use of a Flash Player is inevitably not available to some users. For this reason, many developers are now including alternatives to Flash content using other technologies such as HTML 5.
Tags: Flash Player, Flash files, Adobe Flash, Adobe Flash Player, Flash content, animation video