Flash ─ Building the Interactive Web

Adobe Flash began as a simple animation tool and grew into a multimedia platform thatoffered a generation of creators and innovators an astonishing range of opportunities to develop anddistribute new kinds of digital content. For the better part of a decade, Flash was the de factostandard for dynamic online media, empowering amateur and professional developers to shape thefuture of the interactive Web. In this book, Anastasia Salter and John Murray trace the evolution ofFlash into one of the engines of participatory culture.

Salter and Murrayinvestigate Flash as both a fundamental force that shaped perceptions of the web and a keytechnology that enabled innovative interactive experiences and new forms of gaming. They examine aseries of works that exemplify Flash's role in shaping the experience and expectations of webmultimedia. Topics include Flash as a platform for developing animation (and the"Flashimation" aesthetic); its capacities for scripting and interactive design; games andgenres enabled by the reconstruction of the browser as a games portal; forms and genres of media artthat use Flash; and Flash's stance on openness and standards--including its platform-defining battleover the ability to participate in Apple's own proprietary platforms.

Flash'sexit from the mobile environment in 2011 led some to declare that Flash was dead. But, as Salter andMurray show, not only does Flash live, but its role as a definitive cross-platform tool continues toinfluence web experience.

Anastasia Salter is Assistant Professor of Information Arts and Technologies at the University of Baltimore. John Murray is a PhD student at the Expressive Intelligence Studio at the University of California, Santa Cruz.