Flash is an animation program for the Internet. Instead of flat pictures, or little looping animated gifs, Flash allows Web sites to display Web animation that comes close to the animation you see on TV.

Flash is interactive, which means that you can click on objects, it uses sound, and now you can even enter text into the animation. Flash is one of the reasons why the Internet is becoming more and more fun to surf.

To see Flash in your browser, you need a plug-in, a little program that works with both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. The newest versions of these browsers have Flash pre-installed. So if you're using an older browser and don't have Flash, you can either download a new browser or download the Flash plug-in.

We focus on plug-ins in another Nitty Gritty article, if you'd like to learn more about them.

Let's start by downloading the Flash plug-in.