Macromedia Flash Player 5

Macromedia Flash Player 5 was released by Macromedia on August 24, 2000.

New features

 * A major advance in ability, with the evolution of Flash's scripting abilities as released as ActionScript.
 * Saw the ability to customize the authoring environment's interface.
 * Macromedia Generator was the first initiative from Macromedia to separate design from content in Flash files. Generator 2.0 was released in April 2001, and featured real-time server-side generation of Flash content in its Enterprise Edition. Generator was discontinued in 2002, in favor of new technologies such as Flash Remoting, which allows for seamless transmission of data between the server and the client, and ColdFusion Server.

History
In October 2000, usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote an article critiquing the usability of Flash content, titled "Flash: 99% Bad". Macromedia later hired Nielsen to help improve Flash usability.

In September 2001, Macromedia and Microsoft made a deal to include Flash Player with all versions of Windows XP as well as Windows CE. By February 2002, Macromedia and Microsoft announced an agreement to provide support for Flash-based content on the Microsoft TV platform.