The History of Flash and SWF
The SWF format began in early 1996 as the file format used by a program called FutureSplash Animator. By the end of 1996, Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/) had purchased FutureSplash as a complement to its Shockwave multimedia platform (the acronym SWF expands to ShockWave/Flash[7]), and FutureSplash became Flash 1.0. For more on the history of Flash, see Untold History: The History of Flash at http://untoldhistory.weblogs.com/stories/storyReader$4/.
In 1998, Macromedia released the SWF file format specification to the public as an open standard. In practice, however, the public release of the specification has always lagged behind the latest version of Flash, and has been riddled with errors. The OpenSWF group (http://www.openswf.org) has been good about correcting and reposting the specifications.
To play back an SWF movie, you need an SWF player. Macromedia makes a freely downloadable player and browser plug-in that is available for all popular desktop platforms (including Linux). Several third-party SWF players are also available. Two benefits of the Macromedia plug-in are that it is relatively innocuous at just under 200K, and it is synchronized with the latest release of Flash. As of this writing, 90% of the clients on the Web are equipped with the Flash plug-in.
It is important to note the distinction between the Macromedia Flash platform and the SWF file format. “Flash” was originally just the name of Macromedia’s tool for creating and editing ...
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