FutureSplash Animator was a vector-based animation editor written by Jonathan Gay

Jonathan Gay

Jonathan Gay is a computer programmer and software entrepreneur based in Northern California. Gay was a co-founder of FutureWave Software in 1993. For a decade, he was the main programmer and visionary of Flash, an animation editor for web pages...

 for this company FutureWave Software

FutureWave Software

FutureWave Software was a software developer and publisher based in San Diego, California. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay in early 1993. VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from Silicon Beach Software, then Aldus....

. The company and the product were later bought by Macromedia

Macromedia

Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...

 then Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

, and became Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

 (formerly Macromedia Flash).

History

The company first product, SmartSketch, was initially a vector-based drawing program for pen-based computers. With the implosion of the pen-oriented operated systems, it was ported to Microsoft Windows as well as Apple's MacOS. In 1995, the company decided that they should add animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 capabilities to their product and deploy it over the burgeoning World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

. The only way to create such animations on the web at the time was through the use of Java, but this was quickly replaced with the debut of Netscape's

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

 plug-in architecture. The product was released as FutureSplash Animator in May 1996.

The technology was used on several big-name website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

s such as Microsoft's

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 MSN

MSN

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

, Fox

Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

's official The Simpsons

The Simpsons

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

website and Disney's

The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...

 Disney Daily Blast. At this point, the company consisted of six people. As Disney also used Macromedia's

Macromedia

Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...

 Shockwave

Macromedia Shockwave

Adobe Shockwave is a multimedia platform used to add animation and interactivity to web pages. It allows Adobe Director applications to be published on the Internet and viewed in a web browser on any computer which has the Shockwave plug-in installed...

 player, this provided a connection to Macromedia, which approached FutureWave Software about working together. In December 1996 Macromedia bought FutureWave, and FutureSplash Animator became Macromedia Flash 1.0.

Macromedia Flash later (2005) became Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

.

The file format was SPL and FutureSplash animations can be viewed with new versions of Adobe Flash Player.