Basics of the client system environment

Flash Player 9 and later, Adobe AIR 1.0 and later

As you build more advanced applications, you may find a need to know details about—and access functions of—your users’ operating systems. The flash.system package contains a collection of classes that allow you to access system-level functionality such as the following:

Determining which application and security domain code is executing in
Determining the capabilities of the user’s Flash runtime (such as Flash® Player or Adobe® AIR™) instance, such as the screen size (resolution) and whether certain functionality is available, such as mp3 audio
Building multilingual sites using the IME
Interacting with the Flash runtime’s container (which could be an HTML page or a container application).
Saving information to the user’s clipboard

The flash.system package also includes the IMEConversionMode and SecurityPanel classes. These classes contain static constants that you use with the IME and Security classes, respectively.

Important concepts and terms

The following reference list contains important terms:

Operating system: The main program that runs on a computer, within which all other applications run—such as Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux®.
Clipboard: The operating system’s container for holding text or items that are copied or cut, and from which items are pasted into applications.
Application domain: A mechanism for separating classes used in different SWF files, so that if the SWF files include different classes with the same name, the classes don’t overwrite each other.
IME (input method editor): A program (or operating system tool) that is used to enter complex characters or symbols using a standard keyboard.
Client system: In programming terms, a client is the part of an application (or whole application) that runs on an individual’s computer and is used by a single user. The client system is the underlying operating system on the user’s computer.