Flash offers lots of tools and helps you express your creative ideas on digital canvas. The main working area of Flash is called ‘stage” and at the left side of stage, you can see the designing tools. Using those tools, you can draw objects, add Flash web animation effects and create Flash movie files. Here is a simple step by step process for a basic Flash design.

1.      Open Flash and go to the “Flash document” option under “create new” tab. A blank stage and an animation timeframe will appear on screen.

2.      Look at the “tools” panel and select “brush tool” to draw an object. You can select the paint color from the “color” box. Select any suitable paintbrush style from the brush head menu.

3.      Using the paintbrush you can draw a line or a smiley or any other graphics on the stage area. The key frame on the timeline remains a blank circle till the stage is empty. As soon as you draw an image, the first key frame’s circle changes into black, denoting something is drawn on the stage.

4.      If you want to add a new layer, click on the “new layer” icon. Now go the “file” menu and click on “import”. This option allows you to bring any image on the stage from hard disc. Click on “import to stage” and find an image that you want to import for Flash  design. When the image appears on stage, you can drag it to any place for customized design.

5.      The text adding process is pretty simple. Click on the “new layer” icon and then select “A” tool (text tool) from the tools palette. It will open a text property pane at the bottom of your screen. Select the font style, size and text orientation from the text property pane. Click on the stage and type the text content.

6.      To change the background color of stage area, click on the black arrow at the top of the tools column. After that, you should click on the “background” box and change the background color.

7.      Once the design is complete, go to the “file” menu, click on “save as”, give a name for the file and hit the “save” button. Your job is done.

These are only the basic Flash designing guidelines. If you want to explore the possibilities of Flash, then join a designing college and start learning Flash.

According to HTML5 enthusiasts, Flash’s days are numbered and HTML5 is here to rule the web world. But Google thinks otherwise. In fact, the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube, continues to use Flash for online videos, and has also recently clarified that they intend to carry on YouTube-ing videos in Flash format with the help of Flash Player.

This news however, comes as a surprise to Flash design industry insiders, because, for the past one year, Google has been actively supporting HTML5 and has on offer, a HTML5 player for the YouTube site, encoding videos with open source WebM codec. It’s a royalty free codec and helps browsers play HTML5 videos seamlessly.

So how come Flash is still in use?

The problem is, browser developers are divided into two camps and they don’t have any universal codec to support HTML5 videos. Google, Mozilla and Opera support WebM technology, while Apple and Microsoft are backing H.264 codec.

Apple and Microsoft or rather, Safari and IE, will not accept WebM based on VP8 codec  because it’s owned by their rival, Google, and also because they are the members of H.264 patent team. MPEG LA is the license owner of H.264 and they are planning to create a new patent pool that will try to buy the license of WebM.

H.264 codec powers Flash video content. YouTube is using H.264 video codec since 2007 and until all the browsers start supporting a universal codec, they will use H.264. However, YouTube is world’s largest video library. Google can easily compel other browser developers to accept WebM by changing the Flash videos into HTML5 video.

So, why they are not doing so?

HTML5 is still going through a development phase and HTML5 video has some limitations. HTML5 does not offer high quality streaming of large video files like Flash Player, and it also can’t display a video full screen. You can copy a Flash video from YouTube and embed it in your site effortlessly with the help of a professional Flash design company, but HTML5 video content embedding process is not supported by every web development platform.

Google is backing Flash for now, because HTML5 is still not mature enough to replace it. They even started embedding Flash Player in Chrome browser and Android OS. Flash website design may have some SEO issues, but Flash video format and Player is still the ruler of online video entertainment.

According to YouTube software engineer John Harding, “While HTML5’s video support enables us to bring most of the content and features of YouTube to computers and other devices that don’t support Flash Player; it does not yet meet all of our needs. Today, Adobe provides the best platform for YouTube’s video distribution requirements, which is why our primary video player is built with it.”

Live streaming is the new phenomenon in web world and several companies are providing this service. From cricket match to rock concert, you can now see everything real time on internet. The credit for live and on-demand media streaming goes to media servers.

Though there are various media servers in the market, none is as resourceful as Flash media server. With the help of this server and a custom Flash media server application, developers can stream both audio and video content online.

Flash Media Server, popularly known as FMS is developed by Adobe Systems. It can be used for live streaming and real time communication. Real time communication means, with the help of FMS, Flash design experts can provide live multi player online gaming facilities and develop chat rooms.

FMS is developed using ActionScript 1. It supports FLV and H.264 format for live streaming and AAC, LC-AAC, FLV, MP3, HE-AAC and Speex for on-demand streaming. Besides video/audio streaming, it can also record H.264/AAC in MPEG 4 format.

This powerful media server supports RTMP, RTMPT, RTMPTE RTMFP, RTMPS and RTMPE protocols. Using a FMS application, you can deliver flawless audio and video experience to the end users. The enhanced bit rate manipulation features of FMS ensure seamless audio/video transmission without any buffer time.  As soon as someone hits on the “play” button, video streaming starts immediately. Users can also skip some parts of a video without waiting for it to download.

FMS is the ideal platform for broadcasting entertainment, education and interactive advertising content. It supports on demand HTTP streaming and offers Multicast feature. Multicast is used by large IT firms to stream live videos without giving any pressure on the internal server.

Using a FMS application, you can offer live chat and live video conferencing services. However, some IT enterprises may say that we already have free apps like Skype for video chatting and text chatting, then why should we use a FMS app? It offers unmatchable data security. When someone sees a video or talk via a chat application, the data stays in the server, hence, there is no possibility of unsolicited video/audio download.

Flash Media Server also helps you keep a track of content consumption. You can easily calculate how many viewers saw your live broadcast, how many times they forwarded and paused a video etc.

The best thing about Flash Media Server applications is that they can be installed in any website. If you run a Flash design company, then start developing FMS apps and stay ahead of competitors.