Summary

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.

Choice Review

Flash belongs to the "Platform Studies" series, which started with Racing the Beam, by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost (CH, Aug'09, 46-6853). Books in the series examine the systems underlying computing. Salter (Information Arts and Technologies, Univ. of Baltimore) and Murray (PhD student, Expressive Intelligence Studio, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) chronicle Flash as it evolved from a simple content creation tool to becoming a platform and its own form of media prior to its purported demise in 2011. The authors explore how Flash democratized interactive media production and unshackled its distribution for ubiquitous web, mobile, and game interactivity. The narrative is accessible to nontechnical audiences, but those with computer backgrounds will especially enjoy the finer technical details that trace Flash's ongoing legacy to modern technologies and beyond. Game researchers will also appreciate the impact and influence of Flash on video games and playable media. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students and researchers/faculty in game design hardware and software development programs. --Albert Chen, Cogswell College