Flash
What is Flash?
Flash began as a web animation tool favored by artists, but has morphed over the years to become a ubiquitous web application platform.

The word Flash is used to describe many things. These include the Flash Player (virtual machine), Macromedia’s IDE called Flash, and compiled Flash bytecode (also known as a SWF). Flash encompasses other technologies such as the ActionScript programming language, RTMP protocol, and AMF data format. Tod ay, “Flash” means the Flash Platform.

什么是Flash？(awflasher.com 译)

Flash开始只是一群喜爱动画的艺术设计者们所使用的一款动画软件，但是现在却已经演变成了一种广泛使用的web应用程序平台。

其实，Flash可以指代很多东西。包括，Flsah播放器（虚拟机），Flash集成开发环境（IDE），编译后的SWF文件。Flash还涵盖了很多其他的技术，如动作脚本，RTMP协议，AMF数据格式。今天，“flash”泛指这种开发平台（Flash Platform）