Flash celebrated its 10 years at a conference in Brighton in the UK - called Flash On The Beach - which brought together hundreds of developers, designers and illustrators, many of whom work exclusively with the application.
Ten years ago, it was just a way to present animated graphics on a web browser - but people are now experimenting with it in many other ways, for example with mobile phones.
However, it remains best known for animation, and not just on the web; increasingly, Flash-based content is broadcast on television.
Dominic Minns of firm Plug-in Media compares it to the revolutionary way that, in the 1960s, animation company Hanna-Barbera came up with the idea of layering cells on top of each other, meaning that much less had to be drawn at any one time.
"Yogi Bear and all those characters have a necktie on, so that they don't have to draw the body again, they can just draw the head and you don't see the join.
"That made animation back then a lot cheaper, and able to be mass-produced for TV."
He adds: "And that's like Flash now - the way that Flash works in that when you animate for Flash, you build up libraries of different animation - someone running, someone talking, all the different mouth shapes.
Listen to Digital Planet on the BBC World Service.
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