Editing Flash

|title=Adobe Flash

|logo=Adobe_Flash_Logo.png

|logowidth=160

|developer=Adobe

|release=1996

|discontinued=2020

'''Flash''' (previously '''F'''utureSp'''lash''' Animator, before that SmartSketch) is a software platform created by FutureWave Software and is currently owned by Adobe (formerly Macromedia). Originally a drawing program for PenPoint OS, later ported to Windows and Macintosh when pen computing failed to take off, frame-by-frame animation features were added to it in a new program called FutureSplash Animator. The company was acquired by Macromedia in December 1996, rebranding FutureSplash Animator to Flash, an amalgamation of "Future" and "Splash". In turn, Macromedia was acquired by Adobe on December 3, 2005. Their operations, networks, and customer care organizations were merged shortly after.

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;width:100%"

!scope="col"|Name

!scope="col"|Platform(s)

!scope="col"|Latest version

!scope="col"|[[#ScaleForm GFx|ScaleForm GFx]]

!scope="col"|[[#Adobe AIR|Adobe AIR]]

!scope="col"|<abbr title="Free/Libre and Open-Source Software">FLOSS</abbr>

!scope="col"|Active

!scope="col"|[[Recommended Emulators|Recommended]]

!colspan="8"|Desktop & NPAPI & Web

|{{~}} <ref group=N name=scaleform>Requires the third-party software component to access it.</ref> ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{~}} <ref group=N>Adobe versions discontinued. Harman versions are currently maintained for enterprise customers only.</ref> ||{{✓}}

|{{~}} <ref group=N name=scaleform/> ||{{✗}}||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}}

|align=left|{{Icon|Windows|Linux|macOS|Web}}

|[https://ruffle.rs/downloads Nightly builds]

|align=left|{{Icon|Windows7|macOS|Linux}}

|[https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle-android git]

|[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=games.flashlite 1.5.16]

|{{~}} ||{{~}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{✓}}

|{{~}} ||{{~}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✓}} ||{{~}}

|? ||? ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}} ||{{✗}}

;[[Ruffle]] <small class="plainlinks" style="font-weight:normal;">([https://ruffle.rs/demo/ web demo]) ([https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/310 avm1 compatibility]) ([https://ruffle.rs/avm2.html avm2 compatibility])</small>

:A Rust-based player that targets both HTML5 and desktop. Ruffle has been able to run many early Flash games since 2021, and the main development focus is now on support for newer AVM2-based files, although that's still far from complete as of 2024. Unlike the other HTML5 options, Ruffle can be installed as a WebExtension in browsers that support it, with the caveat that a website's hosted copy will sometimes override the extension even if the site is running an older build.

:Ruffle has become hugely popular as an alternative SWF player, being notably used by a bunch of veteran Flash content sites including [https://www.newgrounds.com Newgrounds], [https://homestarrunner.com Homestar Runner] and [https://www.coolmathgames.com CoolMathGames], and also by the Internet Archive's [https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash Flash library]. It's also the most actively developed and arguably the most accurate of the open-source players that are available today, so this is likely your next best option if you don't want to bother with Flash Player or anything that's been forked from it.

[[wikipedia:NPAPI|NPAPI]]—in case you don't remember—is an obsolete browser plugin system designed to allow for interactive web-page elements beyond what early versions of HTML could do on their own. While there were a bunch of different in-browser software platforms co-existing in the earlier days of the internet, NPAPI effectively existed only for the sake of SWF players once the format became properly dominant and pushed everything else out of the in-browser ecosystem. With the shrinking relevance of SWF in the late 2010s, the plugin system that the players relied on was increasingly seen as an ancient relic that modern browsers would be better off without, and so NPAPI started being phased out by all the major browser vendors in late 2020 (around the same time that Adobe was preparing to drop Flash Player itself). NPAPI hasn't entirely gone away though, as some indie browser devs still maintain it in their own forks of Firefox and Chromium and such.

:The proprietary reference player, which Adobe stopped directly supporting at the end of 2020 and has since fully delisted from their website. The plugin version has a built-in kill-switch that was flipped in January 2021, so it's probably not much use even in browsers that still support NPAPI, but the desktop player version is still usable if you download it from an archived version of the Adobe website. It's also worth noting that the player hasn't been completely discontinued: Harman International continues to maintain [https://airsdk.harman.com/flashplayer an extended support version] intended for enterprise users; and there's also a consumer-level Chinese version which is actively developed by Zhongcheng, although you shouldn't get it from their official site (Flash [dot] cn) because it'll be full of bundled malware.

:Despite the hard discontinuation and a lack of support for user-friendly features such as URL spoofing, Adobe's Flash Player still remains the most widely-compatible desktop player for Flash games as of 2023, which is why the [[Flashpoint]] preservation project still relies on Flash Player to run its SWF games.

::An unofficial effort that takes the still-active Zhongcheng version of Flash Player and repacks it minus as much malware as the Clean Flash project can remove. This might be the better option if you're looking for an NPAPI player specifically.

:A C++ player designed to provide drop-in FLOSS replacements for both the desktop and NPAPI versions of Flash Player. It claims to have 83% of the overall SWF spec covered as of August 2022, but development has been slow ever since it became a mostly one-person effort circa 2015. Lightspark historically focused on more recent versions of the SWF spec that weren't supported by Gnash, hence why Lightspark could (and still can) use Gnash as an automatic fallback if both are installed simultaneously.

;AwayFL <small class="plainlinks" style="font-weight:normal;">([https://exponenta.games/games/AFL/ web demo])</small>

;WAFlash <small class="plainlinks" style="font-weight:normal;">([https://clubpenguinadvanced.github.io/waflash-demo/ web demo])</small>

;swf2js <small class="plainlinks" style="font-weight:normal;">(web demos: [https://swf2js.com/free/index.html free], [https://swf2js.com/prod/index.html production])</small>

* [https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash?tab=collection Archive.org-Software Library: Flash] - Internet Archive's Flash Games Software Library is abundant with options for any level of computer gaming. With an in-site emulator ready to run thousands of games in the Software Library, the Internet Archive can turn your computer into a mini arcade at the click of a button.

* [https://huwdp.github.io/Flash-Matrix/ Huw Pritchard's Flash Matrix] ([https://github.com/huwdp/Flash-Matrix source repo]) &mdash; an effort to calculate AVM2/AS3 support across multiple Flash players