In the last year, Adobe has continued to transform Flash from a simple animation platform to an incredibly powerful software development environment that allows for sophisticated applications to be deployed on the web. Action Script, the underlying language that powers Flash applications, used to be relatively primitive. With the advent of Action Script 3, Flash now incorporates a full implementation of ECMA Script (the standard behind JavaScript). This combines a complete, object-oriented programming language with an efficient virtual machine and a state-of-the-art graphics engine.

Since it based on ECMA Script, Flash also has the ability to directly interface with web applications driven by popular AJAX technology, using an External Interface system that allows it to send and receive events to and from JavaScript. The Flash virtual machine can be used to complement AJAX systems, instead of being isolated from the container webpage like previous versions of Flash.

Finally, the popularity of sites based on Flash, such as YouTube, means that Flash has a very high deployment rate. Adobe’s Flash browser plug-in is installed on a higher percentage of browsers than any other, with over 75% of current internet users able to access Flash content. This number continues to climb, as more and more sites are built using applications developed in Flash. As the Web 2.0 is becoming a reality, Flash stands at the forefront as one of the primary technologies driving innovation on the web.