Flash player is a plug-in that allows your browser to play Flash movies.

Web designers love Flash movies because they can have moving pictures, games, and interactivity on pages that download in a reasonable amount of time.

If you have seen websites with games, cartoons or extra interactivity all on the same web page you've probably already used Flash.

What you can do with Flash

A web page built using Flash might have cool buttons, or menu bars that change as you make choices. It could let you play a game, or do a drawing.

You can even have fully interactive web pages that look more like video games than the web.

Parts of the BBC, like CBBC and CBeebies , are written using Flash, and it is very common on company websites, especially design and media companies that want to impress visitors.

A CBBC Flash game

And many newspaper and magazine websites, including BBC News Online use Flash to make interactive maps of places that are in the news.

Movies and players

Flash is both the program used by web designers to make the pages, games and other bits and pieces, and the name of the special files – or 'movies' - that this program creates.