How Flash rose and fell as the world's most ubiquitous yet divisive
software platform, enabling the development and distribution of a world
of creative content.
Adobe Flash began as a simple animation tool and grew into a multimedia
platform that offered a generation of creators and innovators an
astonishing range of opportunities to develop and distribute new kinds
of digital content. For the better part of a decade, Flash was the de
facto standard for dynamic online media, empowering amateur and
professional developers to shape the future of the interactive Web. In
this book, Anastasia Salter and John Murray trace the evolution of Flash
into one of the engines of participatory culture.
Salter and Murray investigate Flash as both a fundamental force that
shaped perceptions of the web and a key technology that enabled
innovative interactive experiences and new forms of gaming. They examine
a series of works that exemplify Flash's role in shaping the experience
and expectations of web multimedia. Topics include Flash as a platform
for developing animation (and the "Flashimation" aesthetic); its
capacities for scripting and interactive design; games and genres
enabled by the reconstruction of the browser as a games portal; forms
and genres of media art that use Flash; and Flash's stance on openness
and standards--including its platform-defining battle over the ability
to participate in Apple's own proprietary platforms.
Flash's exit from the mobile environment in 2011 led some to declare
that Flash was dead. But, as Salter and Murray show, not only does Flash
live, but its role as a definitive cross-platform tool continues to
influence web experience.
