Wiley ActionScript: Your visual blueprint for creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional 978-0-470-48194-3 ユーザーズマニュアル

dobe Flash is the industry-standard application 
for creating animation and playing video on Web 
sites. It is fairly easy to learn when you are first 

getting started but has many powerful features that 
enable advanced developers to create full Web sites, 
interactive games, or almost anything else they need.

Flash was originally developed under the name 
FutureSplash. At the time, it was a simple tool for 
creating animation. Macromedia purchased it in 1997 and 
changed the name to Flash. Flash was the primary 
motivation for Adobe to purchase Macromedia in late 
2006.

Flash CS4 Professional is the primary integrated development 
environment (IDE) for developing Flash movies. When you 
think of “learning Flash” or “using Flash,” this refers to 
learning or using Flash Professional, and it is the application 
that is discussed throughout this book. Unless stated 
otherwise, any further references in the text to Flash should be 
assumed to mean Flash CS4 Professional.

Flash Player is the free application used to view Flash movies. 
Regardless of the tool used to create a Flash movie, your 
users actually view and interact with it through Flash Player. 
Flash Player is the single most-installed software, with current 
estimates putting it on more than 99 percent of computers 
worldwide.

As of the release of Flash CS4 Professional, Adobe has also 
released Flash Player 10. Flash Player has enjoyed record-
breaking adoption rates, with previous versions averaging six 
million downloads per day.

Flex offers a more developer-centric environment than Flash. 
Flex is an open-source platform that enables developers to 
create visual layouts in an XML-derived markup language 
called MXML and to add interactivity and back-end 
connectivity through ActionScript 3.0. Regardless, Flex 
applications are viewed by the user through Flash Player, and 
unless the site specifies it, there is no real way to look at a 
Flash-based site and know whether it was created in Flash 
Professional or Flex.

The Flex platform is open source and can be downloaded from 
the Adobe Open Source Web site, http://opensource.adobe.
com. Although Flex applications can be created in any text 
editor, Adobe has developed an IDE to assist in the creation of 
Flex applications called Flex Builder. Built on the open-source 
Eclipse toolset, Flex Builder is available for purchase from 
Adobe’s Web site.

In late 2007, Adobe announced that it had begun development 
of a new application in the Flex platform. This tool, at the time 
code-named Thermo, would enable designers to take visual 
compositions, created in applications such as Adobe 
Photoshop, and easily convert them to Flex applications. In 
November 2008 at Adobe MAX, the company’s annual 
developer’s conference, Adobe announced that the product 
would be officially named Flash Catalyst and that the product 
would be released sometime in late 2009 or early 2010.

Today, Adobe markets a series of products under the Flash Platform. All of these products can work together to develop Flash-
based applications for a variety of delivery systems. The Flash Platform’s two primary applications are Flash CS4 Professional and 
Flash Player, but the Flash Platform also contains the Flex 3 platform, several server-based products including the Flash Media 
Server, and Flash Lite.

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