In answer to your question "What is Flash?" – here is a brief explanation using some sites to explain. Basically Flash is a browser plugin and a software application used to design and build vector based animations and play sound - but that is sort of a meaningless explanation so let's look at what it does.

Please view http://www.billyhalemusic.com/ then hit the back button to return to this article.

BillyHaleMusic.com contains a simple FLASH based presentation (placed below in this page for convenience) –

where it loads and reads “Filmusic Composer” and the text zooms in – that is Flash being played by the Flash player plugin loaded in your browser. A plugin is an additional application that is used by a browser to load other file types besides what the browser would load on its own.

If you refresh Billy's site, or this one, the short animation will play again; to refresh from MSIE (Microsoft Internet Explorer, the mainstream browser) choose the View menu, Refresh. Or hit the F5 key, or at the top of your browser, 4 icons over from the left select the refresh icon with the two green arrows circling around each other.

So right mouse click on the area of your screen that reads “filmusic COMPOSER” on Billy's main page - or above on this page, and from the context sensitive dropdown menu below your mouse see how it reads:

“Zoom In
…….
Show All
…….
About Macromedia Flash Player version x…”

that shows that part of the screen is being displayed in the Flash Player plugin within your browser. You can play with the Flash controls by right mouse clicking over the Flash section and trying different options. The image below illustrates what you should see:

Now, move your mouse and right mouse click on the photo of Billy, or the text or anything else on this screen and you’ll see that you get other options, because you are no longer within the embedded FLASH component of the HTML file.

Sometimes when looking at a FLASH site and right mouse clicking the only option you get is:

“Settings
….
About Macromedia Flash Player version x”

this means the entire thing is being displayed on the screen by FLASH.

FLASH is said to have a higher market penetration than any Web based application beside HTML itself!!! It is huge – between 96-98% of everyone using browsers has the FLASH player loaded. People like it so they also tend to update it when they are on a site that requires a new version of Flash to display.

Now FLASH itself is an application manufactured by the Macromedia Company out of San Francisco. There are a whole bunch of related Macromedia applications listed on their site which begin with the name "Flash". The name comes from the name and quality (quickly) of lights used to produce images for cameras.

Macromedia's business model for FLASH is kind of like the business model of radio - transistor and other more modern radios are so cheap anyone can own one - and the radio broadcast station costing the big bucks is paying for their technology by selling advertising to pay for the music broadcast. So the person with the radio is receiving the music essentially for free.

In a similar way the FLASH player is free for download but the Flash compiler - that is the Flash application costs developers money. Most animated advertising on the Web is done in Flash.

RealNetworks plugins are also based on this same model - the Real Player can be had for free, but the content is not always free, and Real servers cost broadcasters, called Webcasters, companys' money.

Macromedia makes some of the very best UI design and development tools in the world, including my fave -- Dreamweaver. FLASH the application compiles files in a fairly complex way – and sound and images placed in FLASH are very tightly compressed, so they load very quickly, faster than just about any application served over the Web.

Check out this URL – the Macromedia's FLASH video gallery -
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/flashpro/video/gallery/?promoid=homepage_pu2_flashgallery_091304

While this entire Macromedia site appears to be in HTML, it is actually FLASH embedded in HTML in sections – which gets around some of the worst parts of using FLASH. The navigation bars, and the images are all in FLASH.

Pick an image and mouse over it – see how it enlarges? That is Flash actionscript at work, Flash's programming language.

Now turn down your speaker volume if you are in an office - if alone - Bob's Your Uncle.

On the right there is a menu to launch FLASH sites – I recommend you load a couple, just click on one you like – you will see that some are completely designed in FLASH.

No doubt you will pick one or two that auto load SOUND – and you may not be able to figure out how to get out of the presentation or turn the sound down or off – these are some of the User Interface and design issues around FLASH that even the best of the best grapple with in designing user friendly FLASH applications. User Friendly in this sense means "that don't make you want to kill the designer".

Another way to view FLASH sites is the Flash Site of the Day - displayed on Macromedia's site virtually forever - view it: http://www.macromedia.com

If anything, one can say that much of Asia seems very fond of animated sites and sound, even more than the West. It is fun to see the FLASH sites of the day because if there is anything new and exciting in the world of ONLINE Design it’s being done in FLASH.

Flash accesses databases, SQL and others, can call applications, and can push information out to other applications. It can be used in as simple as the Billy Hale intro, or as in a complex way as a developer can imagine. Fonts are designed specifically for Flash and there are code bases, scripts, and sites dedicated just to Flash, like any other development environment.

Macromedia has been very communicative and responsive to the design and development community which can account for at least part of their success. Frequently they travel around the country on Roadshows and demonstrate its new capabilities.

Flash MX, the application, not the Player, is expensive for a full product – on Macromedia's site FLASH runs about $700. (By the way MX stands for absolutely nothing - its just the version number because it sounds cool - like
"millennium x" does, but meaningless.

Other suppliers (it is termed “reseller” in the software industry) charge less for Macromedia's products – this is common practice in sw (software). For example buying a Microsoft Developer’s Network package on Microsoft’s site is much more expensive than purchasing it from a reseller – this is to keep the resellers and channels HAPPY with their profits and to show that sw manufacturers are not trying to compete with their channels.

Same thing with Macromedia FLASH – buying it directly from Macromedia is more expensive than purchasing it from a reseller, and there are reputable discount houses - usually they just send you the disk and the license to use it.

You can also read if a site is using FLASH if you VIEW SOURCE from the browser to see embedded Flash – for example here is the embed commands from Billy’s site's html:

See how it begins with the OBJECT command?

<object classid="clsid: bunch of big long numbers here " codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/ big long path to someplace on Macromedia's site including versions here" width="300" height="100">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.billyhalemusic.com/images/filmusicomposer2.swf">
<param name="quality" value="high">
<embed src="http://www.billyhalemusic.com/images/filmusicomposer2.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="100"></embed></object>

And ends by closing the OBJECT command? That is what is telling the browser to load a FLASH component with the EMBED command right inside it.

That code looks complex but the tools FLASH and Dreamweaver auto build most of the script for the developer. Most coding tools do. It is learning the tool that is the issue – not the script itself unless you are using Action script and then there are libraries for developers to access.

This is what .NET is about from the developers point of view; instead of recoding stuff yourself (as a developer) from scratch, you can use existing code bases – libraries - someone has already written – and pay them something to lease it. In reverse developers can earn money in that fashion.

Another program named FLASH -
Just so you know – Microsoft makes a help compiler called Flash.exe (that Linda Lane helped get funding for, spec, and test version 1.0 in 1992-3). This is in common use for Web application Help, and comes with the Windows Development Kit API, but it is an entirely different program.

Other things called "Flash"
According to Billy Bob Thornton's site, "a wall of flash" is "examples of the tattoo artist's work".

More general information on where Flash is going in the future see: http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/articles/flash99good.html

PS. Developer means someone who writes script or code.
Designer means someone who uses an application usually to make something pretty.
While Developers and Designers sometimes wear each others hats,
in general one likes mind puzzles and math, and the other visual stuff. Which one is which is up to them.