Creating Mathlets in Flash -- Advantages and Features
As a tool for creating mathlets and delivering them over the web, Flash offers great advantages and its full potential is yet to be realized. The creation and delivery cycle for Flash mathlets:

Authoring environment
(Flash 8 or Flash CS3):

A compiled file
embedded in a html page:


Your mathlet running
in a Flash-enabled browser:

  • Very easy to master.
  • Highly visual and intuitive.
  • Compiling and testing done in one click.
  • Incredibly small file sizes! Perfect for delivery over the web. Compiled files of all of the mathlets presented on Kaskosz's mathlet page range from 18KB to 50KB, total!
  • swf files can run in a browser as well as in a stand-alone Flash Player.
  • Almost all browsers are Flash-enabled; that is, contain Flash Player! As of March 2007, Flash Player 8 penetration among web-browsing public was 96.3% in the mature markets (US, Canada, UK, Germany , France, Japan). Flash Player 9 released a few months ago has already reached 83.4% penetration level in mature markets.
  • Flash Player remains light-weight, Flash Player 9 is about 1000KB depending on the platform. It downloads and installs automatically in seconds.
  • Flash Player performs consistently and realiably on all platforms and all browsers.
  • The Flash platform can have server-side components: Flash Media Server 2, Breeze, and others. These are not relevant or needed for creating mathlets but should you ever get interested in developing applications involving the server-side, the authoring environment is the same and everything still runs in the Flash Player.

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