SWF
SWF (Small Web Format, or Shockwave Flash) is a multipurpose multimedia format widely used on the web. It is also known by many other names (often conflated with the names of SWF players), such as Flash, Adobe Flash, Macromedia Flash, Shockwave Flash, and FutureSplash.
Fundamentally it is an animated vector graphics format, but it has many other features, and can contain complete computer programs written in ActionScript. Among its common uses are advertisements, web site user interfaces, video games and other applets, and video playback. This format is famously not supported by Apple's iOS devices, leading Web developers to support alternative means of accomplishing such things as video playing, such as those provided in HTML 5.
SWF is not designed to be editable. Instead, SWF files are usually compiled from a source (project) format called FLA. The ActionScript programming language is also used.
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Disambiguation
SWF is not the same format as the one known as Shockwave, Adobe Shockwave, Macromedia Shockwave, or Shockwave for Director. For that format, see Shockwave (Director).
In personal ads, SWF means "Single White Female", while the airport code SWF refers to the Stewart airport in Newburgh, New York. Neither of these has any particular relevance to file formats, however.
Identifiers
| Format | PRONOM | LoCFDD |
|---|---|---|
| SWF 1–6 (Macromedia) | fmt/104, fmt/105, fmt/106, fmt/107, fmt/108, fmt/109 | |
| SWF 7 | fmt/110 | fdd000130 |
| SWF 8 (Adobe) | fmt/505 | fdd000248 |
| SWF 9–10 | fmt/506, fmt/507 | |
| SWF 11–30 | fmt/757, fmt/758, fmt/759, fmt/760, fmt/761, fmt/762, fmt/763, fmt/764, fmt/765, fmt/766, fmt/767, fmt/768, fmt/769, fmt/770, fmt/701, fmt/772, fmt/773, fmt/774, fmt/775, fmt/776 |
Identification
SWF files begin with a 3-byte ASCII signature:
- "
FWS" is for uncompressed files. - "
CWS" is for files that use zlib compression. - "
ZWS" is for files that use LZMA compression.
See also
Specifications
- SWF File Format Specification, Version 19
- SWF File Format Specification, Version 10
- SWF File Format Specification, Version 9 (from archive.org)
Software
- Adobe Flash Player
- Gnash
- Lightspark
- Shumway (Flash VM / runtime in JavaScript)
- 7-Zip can convert compressed SWF to uncompressed SWF.
