Hence, a multitude of companies related to the software little by little they were abandoning projects related to flash. To give us an idea, Adobe itself has been one of the companies that has long announced its imminent disappearance.
Flash Player can no longer be installed or updated
As we have commented, the beginning of the end of Flash has been carried out and it is not possible to download it anymore from the official website of its developer Adobe. It was in June 2017 when it announced that it would stop distributing and updating Flash Player as of December 31, 2020, more than enough time for developers to prepare and change or adapt their pages. That is why, if we access its web page, we will check how it is not possible to download any file. Instead, the following message appears: “We have retired Flash. Support Flash on December 31, 2020».
At the bottom of your screen it warns us that Adobe no longer supports Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and has blocked Flash content from running in Flash Player since January 12, 2021. Therefore, Adobe strongly recommends to all its users that uninstall flash player immediately. This will help us keep our systems protected. In addition, some users may still see a reminder from Adobe to uninstall Flash Player from their computer.
It is true that many nostalgic users still miss some of the flash content they have been enjoying over the past few years. Precisely for this reason, these people look for some alternative methods through which to continue executing programs based on this standard. Perhaps in most cases nothing related to security happens on our computer. However, we must keep in mind that we are running certain risks unnecessarily by launching flash-based content on current computers with the latest versions of Windows.
Problems using Adobe Flash Player
Once this protocol is deactivated, it is possible that we will find pages or services that require it, so they are outdateds. This makes it highly inadvisable for us to visit them since we can endanger the security of the system itself. This is so because there is no longer support or security updates from Adobe, so they can continue to exist possible security holes. We also meet compatibility issuesWell, even if we keep it installed, if we intend to use it in any of our browsers, it will most likely be impossible.
This means that when we come across a web page that requires us to install flash to display its contents, we are suspicious on all occasions. It is quite likely that what they are trying to do is inject some type of malicious code into our equipment that could endanger our data and applications. In short, we should completely put aside those pages that we visit from the browser and that require us to use Flash at this point.
As a natural substitute for Adobe Flash, HTML5 has become the great alternative, since it does not require installation and can be used by any developer without the need for a license. It is very comfortable to use, it will allow us to forget about plugins and the content can be viewed from any browser. That is precisely why most of the developers of web applications and everything related to the Internet are currently betting heavily on this standard that we are talking about. In addition to being more modern and functional, it offers us all the security we seek when browsing and running programs online.
SWF File Player, a program to open flash applications
To give you an idea, in these same lines we are going to talk about an application that will be very helpful in these tasks that we are discussing. Specifically, it is the program called SWF File Player, this is a player for flash games and applications in SWF format directly from the Redmond system. It is worth mentioning, for those of you who do not know it, that this format, also called Shockwave flash, makes use of vector graphics to create applications and games of various kinds. At the time it was created by Macromedia and currently belongs to the North American group Adobe. This firm is considered one of the most important in the world in the software sector. For example, they own solutions of the importance of Photoshop, Elements or Illustrator, among many others.
In addition, we must take into account that due to the small size of these files that we are talking about, they are usually used for animations on pages Web. In this way it is achieved that these contents are loaded faster and also do not consume many resources. Well, once we know all this, we will tell you that the application called SWF File Player, will allow us, in a simple way, to play this type of SWF file.
Actually, we are referring to a completely free program and it will only be necessary to have installed .NET Framework and Shockwave Flash Object in Windows for its correct operation. At the same time, it is worth knowing that the interface and how to use it is extremely simple. Thanks to all this, we will have the possibility to open the files in SWF format from its top menu, or by directly dragging this file to the main window of the tool. It must be said that the flash files that we open here can be games developed under this standard, or programs of any other type.
How to use it
With this program we will not only be able to play SWF files, but it also allows us to read the metadata tags in the file header. The software has the ability to automatically resize the program window to run and display the entire content of the SWF file.
The use of this application is very fast, because once executed, it will only be necessary to click on the File tab and then on Open. Next, we select the file you want to open (the file extension is *.swf), the software will display a box with information about the metadata tags of our file.
Then click the Play button to display SWF content. In case our SWF file is a Flash game, we can start playing it from now on. Also, by using the F11 hotkey, it is possible to toggle full screen mode.
Supported metadata tags include:
- Signature: a three-byte FWS (Uncompressed SWF), CWS (Compressed SWF).
- Version: An 8-bit number.
- Total length of the file.
- FrameSize: defines the width and height of the clip.
- The playback speed in frames per second.
- Total number of frames.
As we can see, SWF File Player is a very simple and useful program that we can use to play any SWF file content in Windows, so it can be ideal if we have a game in flash format and we want to play it safely on our PC .
Furthermore, it is interesting to know that from a single user interface we will have the possibility of accessing all types of content related to the aforementioned Adobe standard. Here we refer both to applications from different sectors that we have been using for years, or even games that will allow us to recall the leisure moments of yesteryear.
Are there security hazards when using the program?
We have already commented previously that in these times the use of flash content is gradually disappearing. Despite the total withdrawal of support for the standard and the development of applications, there are still users who make use of certain contents of this type. That is precisely why we have written and talked about the SWF File Player program. As I’m sure many of you already know, one of the biggest drawbacks that we encountered in this standard over the last few years of its existence was everything related to the security and privacy.
Therefore, when it comes to installing, running and using this application that we are talking about, some of you may wonder about security. Well then, we must bear in mind that the program as such is completely reliable and we are not going to have problems in this regard. But at the same time something different is already the contents that we upload here, so we should try to get them from reliable or at least proven sources. This means that we can find a security flaw if we load non-legitimate Flash content in the described application.
Advantages of using SWF File Player on Windows
On the other hand, it is also interesting to know that the software is compatible and is capable of opening SWF files that are compressed with a tool specially dedicated to it. For example, if we have a flash game that we download compressed and is part of a ZIP, SWF File Player can run it directly without any problem.
Obviously, all this greatly facilitates the use of this already outdated content, but equally attractive to some, in a simple way. Even if at the time we didn’t enjoy developments based on Adobe Flash, now we won’t have any problems or complications to run them on the latest versions of Windows. In this way, the regulars of these files will be able to remember old times, and those who have not used them, get an idea of the multimedia content of yesteryear that we enjoyed on the Internet.
As expected, this is an application that works very fast and smooth. This is largely due to the fact that the weight of the SWF files It is minimal, as we mentioned before. To give us an idea of what we are talking about here, serve as an example that each game developed in flash has little to do with the rest. For example, this usually weighs around 5 megabytes on average, which in current times is considered more than light. If any of the files flash that we load and execute here requires a Internet connectionwe may have a problem.
And it is that, in this case, it may happen that the game or program does not work in SWF File Player. This is something you will give since the servers are probably down. This is something that, in most cases, will be due to the disappearance of the Adobe standard, and therefore the end of support for its developments. In fact, this is something that will spread more and more over time, all due to the end of Flash that we have told you about.
However, if we leave aside the nostalgia and the good times we’ve had with the software developed under this standard, things just have to get better. The main reason for all this is the new web standards that will be imposed on the market, or that are already doing so, such as HTML5. In this way, over the next few years, we will be able to enjoy these contents online in the same way that we did in…
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