Many eons ago a small software company named FutureWave Software was born, this company would go on to create one of the most used web application.

It all started back in 1993 when Jonathan Gay and several others created FutureWave Software in order to create the vision that Jonathan Gay had carried with him since the days of college. A paint software that was just as easy to use as pen and paper. Without any sales being made they were forced to port it over for Mac OS and Windows.

The following years FutureWave got by on the smallest of margins and without knowing what to do next they started to desperately search for ways to evolve their product. It would not be until in 1995 that FutureWave knew what to do next with SmartSketch. It was in the starting years of what we would later call the “Bronze Age” of the internet.

While FutureWave was fighting for its survival another company named Macromedia was thriving on its success with an application known as Macromedia Director (Later known as Adobe Director). This application was an acquisition from the merger between MacroMind-Paracomp and Authorware Inc. which would lead into the very creation of Macromedia.

Macromedia Director was at the time of the merge a tool for creating interactive multimedia, varying from such things as presentation (Think PowerPoint) all the way to pure animation. This software was widely used for when companies would create such things and at the time it was almost the only software available for this task.

As the internet started to grow at a staggering rate, Macromedia noticed the potential of having Director available for online publishing. This would result in a product we all come to know as Shockwave.

FutureWave saw the potential in Shockwave and began work on a version of their own. They used SmartSketch as a base for FutureSplash Animator (This would later become known as Flash). By shoehorning in feature after features such as frame-by-frame animation and vector support, they had a version ready in May of 1996 and it had taken just under a year to complete.

FutureSplash Animator took off as a rocket. All major corporations started to use it. This was a big problem for Macromedia, and they did what any big corporation does when they can’t compete with small companies. They simply bought FutureWave at the end of 1996. The name Flash was created as a sort of homage to FutureWave and their FutureSplash product (Taking both Future and Splash).

So right about now you may be asking yourself:
–Why did he tell me all of this?

It is simple - the new version of Flash, CS4 (Codenamed “Diesel”) is right around the corner and it is going to be a huge update. Let’s have a look at some of the new features.

First and foremost we now have basic support for 3D Objects. This means that you can make any shape into a 3D-object and manipulate it in 3D-space.

Secondly we now have full access to creating our own filters, thank god. This means that people can make any kind of filter for you to download and use. This can be anything from making an object twirl to “pixelate” a particular object.

Of course the biggest new addition will be inverse kinematic engine or easily put skeleton system. We can now draw object and assign a skeleton to them to animate them. How awesome isn’t that? This is one of the features that made me stick to Anime Studio Pro when animating but now I can finally switch over to Flash once again.

Fourth and final feature I will touch upon is the awesome C/C++ integration. Easily put, anything you made in these can be integrated into Flash and used as you wish. Given that they now also updated Flash to make use of your GPU (Thank god?) they also integrated this and showed it off by simply porting Quake in a matter of seconds. They actually played the real Quake inside Flash, holy crap!

Amongst some minor changes we find a new version of Flex, Actionscript, Enchanted Text Engine, Object manipulation etc.

So what can we expect from Flash in the future? As it looks now, only the sky is the limit.