Flash®: Adobe® Product
A glance at a way of programming an application
Adobe® Flash® is a very popular multimedia platform used for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Originally acquired by Macromedia, Flash was introduced in 1996, and is currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems.
Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page Flash components, to integrate video into web pages, to make games and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications. Flash can manipulate vector and raster graphics, and supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video. It contains an Object-oriented language called ActionScript. After this content is saved and distributed, it can be displayed on several types of computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free for most common web browsers, some mobile phones and for other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).
Files in the SWF format, traditionally called "ShockWave Flash" movies, "Flash movies" or "Flash games", usually have a .swf file extension and may be an object of a web page, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a Projector, a self-executing Flash movie (with the .exe extension in Microsoft Windows).
Source: Wikipedia