Macromedia Flash is a graphics animation program by Macromedia. The resulting files, sometimes called "flash files", may be included in a web page to view in a web browser, or they may be played on a standalone player. Macromedia Flash can be used to bring static web sites to life by adding interactivity to static web pages. Common uses for Macromedia Flash are website introductions which are called flash intros, animated buttons, animated navigational menus and animated advertisements on web pages.

Macromedia Dreamweaver can create cool web site design templates.

Features:

• Tool for creating effective, rich content across desktops and devices
  

• Accelerate projects while maintaining a high degree of creative control
  

• Jump-start projects with templates & components, and take advantage of the online resource library
  

• Speed workflow by directly importing media, including digital video, PDF and EPS files
  

• Add interactivity with powerful scripting

Macromedia Flash Reviews:

Look, Flash MX 2004 is great! Most other people are sad because of a little action script that they don't know. Sure, there may be sometimes where you want to do something and you don't know how to do it. Well, I don't know a thing about actionscript, so I'm buying a book on MX 2004 actionscript. Maybe you should, too. This is a great animating program. It really isn't that hard to do things once you get the hang of it. You can make some simple special effects with motion tweening, shape tweening, and masking. You can easily make looped animations with the symbols. You can even make a video and import it into flash, then add in special effects later. The only problem some people might find with this is that it isn't much different than MX, and it doesn't just give you the action script like MX did, and some things have been relocated and are now harder to find. As far as I know, this can do anything that the other versions could, it's just a little more complicated. If you need to make an animated banner ad for some guy you work for, get flash MX if you can. If you are familiar with Flash and want a more powerful version, get this. If you're not familiar, get this anyway! I didn't know the first thing about flash when I go this, but now I feel fine with it. If you haven't memorized your simple actionscript yet, though, maybe you should just stick with what you've got.

Macromedia Flash is one of the best tools available to build animated web sites. For some individuals and small companies affording it might seem difficult. Besides buying directly from Macromedia you can purchase a legal and licensed copy of Macromedia Flash from other software vendors.

You can often find Macromedia Flash at a discount eBay. A software store may have gotten surplus copies of Macromedia Flash or wish to reduce their Macromedia Flash inventory due to an updated version and will sell new copies of Flash at a reduced cost. There are also educational versions of Macromedia Flash available for students and schools. If you already have a Macromedia Flash product, product upgrades are also available for purchase. Before you bid on an auction, make sure that the Flash products says the product is "new and in a retail box".

Following are Macromedia Flash software auctions on eBay.