- The Macromedia software company originally developed the Flash application along with the Flash Player in the late 1990s to facilitate creation of online, animated content, according to Mindy McAdams in Flash Journalism.
- Flash generally functions to animate illustrations, create slideshows and edit videos for Web pages as part of what is increasingly called interactive media.
- The significance of Flash software lies in its capability to produce complex animation more quickly and easily than previous methods.
- A basic component of Flash is the key frame. A key frame contains an object placed in a particular spot on a canvas. Key frames are set at particular points on a presentation's timeline.
- Tweens include all the frames between key frames and represent the movement of the object from its canvas position in the first key frame to that of the next. In other words, the program automatically recreates the object or illustration and places it in the correct spot on the canvas in each individual frame.
- The speed of the object as it moves through a tween is determined by the frames-per-second setting. The speed of fades and dissolves in slide shows is also determined by this.
