SWF

SWF file format (acronym of "Shockwave Flash", pronounced swiff) is a partially open repository for multimedia and especially for vector graphics. It was originated with FutureWave Software and has come under the control of Adobe from its subsidiary Macromedia. It is also called Adobe Flash®.

Overview

SWF is intended to be small enough for publication on the web. SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function. SWF is also sometimes used for creating animated display graphics and menus for DVD movies, and television commercials.

SWF currently functions as the dominant format for displaying "animated" vector graphics on the Web, far exceeding the use of the W3C open-standard SVG, which has met with problems over competing implementations. While originally limited to presenting vector-based objects and images in a simple sequential manner, the format in its later versions allow audio, video (Using FLV) and many different possible forms of interaction with the end-user.

Text capability

SWF includes specialized ability for text and typography. Ligatures are supported as well as specialized Asian fonts and flow directions (right to left, up and down). Text flows can be multicolumned and will flow around graphics images. The anti-aliasing text engine increases performance and quality of anti-aliased text, particularly for Asian character rendering. Support for stroke fonts reduces memory requirements.

Convert/Render SWF

Kurst SWF Renderer is a free program that will render SWF as a PNG image. It is an Adobe AIR application. This is useful to display SWF content on devices that do not support SWF.

Features

• Renders image sequences from actionscript or timeline animation.
• Exports for duration of tlmeline or number of seconds.
• Batch multiple SWF's to PNG sequences.
• Supports transparent PNG images.

End of Life

Flash Player will be ended by Adobe at the end of 2020. For more information see: https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html The logical followup replacement is HTML5.

For more information

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWF
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/ - The specification.
• Using Flash Video in ePUB
• Flash player - Download the flash player from Adobe. It is available for Windows, MacOS X and Linux