SWF

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File Format
Name SWF
Ontology
Extension(s) .swf, .spl
MIME Type(s) application/x-shockwave-flash, application/futuresplash
LoCFDD fdd000248, others
PRONOM fmt/507, others
Released 1996

SWF 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.

Contents

Disambiguation

SWF is not the same format as the one known as Shockwave, Adobe Shockwave, Macromedia Shockwave, or Shockwave for 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 (Macromedia) fmt/104
SWF 2 fmt/105
SWF 3 fmt/106
SWF 4 fmt/107
SWF 5 fmt/108
SWF 6 fmt/109
SWF 7 fmt/110 fdd000130
SWF 8 (Adobe) fmt/505 fdd000248
SWF 9 fmt/506
SWF 10 fmt/507

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

Software

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