What is a SWF file
SWF files are used for displaying animated vector graphics, multimedia and ActionScript. The SWF file format was developed by Macromedia which is now owned by Adobe. Apart from vector graphics, it can even contain text. SWF files contain animations of varying degrees of interactivity and function. These files can also be played in web browsers that have flash plugins installed.
SWF was originally an acronym for “Shockwave Flash” because it was developed for the Shockwave player. These files are binary files stored as 8-bit bytes. The latest version is the SWF10 which expands text capabilities with support for bidirectional text and complex scripts with the new DefineFont4 tag. This allows embedding JPEG images which have an alpha channel for opacity and a smoothing filter.
Here's a small, but not exhaustive list of programs that can open SWF documents:
- Adobe Flash Player
- Web Browser with flash plugin
