Editing SWF (section)

== History ==
The small company [[FutureWave Software]] originally defined the file format with one primary objective: to create small files for displaying entertaining animations.<ref>{{cite web| title=The History of Flash: The Dawn of Web Animation| url=https://www.adobe.com/macromedia/events/john_gay/page04.html| publisher=Adobe Systems| access-date=2008-01-21| url-status=dead| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080125045402/http://www.adobe.com/macromedia/events/john_gay/page04.html| archive-date=2008-01-25}}</ref>
The idea involved a format which player software could run on any system and which would work with slower network connections. FutureWave released [[FutureSplash Animator]] in May 1996. In December 1996 Macromedia acquired FutureWave and FutureSplash Animator became Macromedia Flash 1.0.

The original naming of SWF came out of Macromedia's desire to capitalize on the well-known [[Macromedia Shockwave]] brand; [[Macromedia Director]] produced Shockwave files for the end user, so the files created by their newer Flash product tried to capitalize on the already established brand. As Flash became more popular than Shockwave itself, this branding decision became more of a liability, so the format started to be referred to as simply SWF.<ref name="Schaeffer2007"/>

Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.adobe.com/ca/about-adobe/fast-facts.html|title=Adobe Fast Facts {{!}} Adobe|website=www.adobe.com|language=en|access-date=2018-10-28}}</ref>

On May 1, 2008, Adobe dropped its licensing restrictions on the SWF format specifications, as part of the [[Open Screen Project]]. However, [[Rob Savoye]], a member of the [[Gnash (software)|Gnash]] development team, has pointed to some parts of the Flash format which remain closed.<ref name="stillpartlyclosed">{{cite web
 |url         = http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/21
 |title       = Free Flash community reacts to Adobe Open Screen Project
 |access-date  = 2008-11-29
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20080928202954/http://www.openmedianow.org/?q=node/21
 |archive-date = 2008-09-28
 |url-status     = usurped
}}</ref> On July 1, 2008, Adobe released code to Google and Yahoo, which allowed their search engines to crawl and index SWF files.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=10523|title=Streamingmedia.com: Google and Yahoo Roll out Flash Search <!-- Bot generated title -->}}</ref>