Every wonder why seemingly every website has an annoying blinking animation or game that asks to click here?

Well that answer is marketing, but wondering how leads to the answer of Wunderkind Jonathon Gay. As a child, Gay became interested and apt at working with computers. So much so that by the time he was in high school his science fair projects were sophisticated enough to earn the attention of professional programmers. By the time he was a senior in high school Gay was working for the company Silicon Beach, which released his first commercial product, Airborne! a black and white game for the Macintosh. Gay had bigger plans than building games for the Apple II or Mac. Before leaving home to attend Harvey Mudd College, Gay contributed to Superpaint 2, a revolutionary program that allowed both simultaneous bit map painting and vector drawing.

Foreseeing a market for graphics, Gay formed his own company. FutureWave Software company built a drawing program, before moving on to software for the emerging market of Internet programmers. Future Wave Software released FutureSplash Animator, which created vector based animations. As a vector based program the animations adjusted to screen size, unlike pixel based programs.

With the advent of Netscapes plug in features turned FutureSlash into a more viable product. Soon major sites such as msn.com and Disney’s Daily Blast were using FutureSplash. Gay had gone from high school standout to the big time. Soon major companies such as Macromedia were taking notice.

In December 1996 Macromedia purchased FutureWave. With a team of developers behind it Flash animations would soon become an Internet staple. Flash enjoyed the advantages of being vector based, bandwidth friendly and browser independent with those advantages, Flash spread. Some would say like a weed.

Back to those annoying, “look at me” animations. Those are almost certainly Flash, but so are useful tools again. The tutorial that showed how to make a Bobbie Flay style meal or the YouTube video showing the after effects of visiting the dentist both probably used Flash Media Player. Much like the Internet Flash has greatly evolved. And like any technology it has been abused. But with out Flash the Internet would be, well, less Flashy (or not as animated).