Features

These days, it's an app that attempts to be all things to all people - play DVDs, organize music, catalog photos, convert video, interact with social networking sites, browse internet multimedia....there's no end to what RealPlayer offers to its users. Even so, it's not an out-and-out success...

Usability

For a start, installation of RealPlayer is annoying - it takes a while, requires lots of "nexts" and tries to install and enable several features that users don't really need. Finally, when it starts, you're offered a chance to upgrade to paid versions of RealPlayer before you have to register yourself with Real Networks. If all this messing around doesn't appeal, check out a slimline app like UMPlayer.

When you're up and running, RealPlayer features a wide interface where you will notice ads and videos recommended by Real Networks. This looks cluttered and messy, and it's hard to know what the app actually offers. In reality, RealPlayer is ideal for playing and sharing video with your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter and it works easily with BlackBerry, iPod, iPhone and other game systems. The new video converter allows you to copy online video to your iPod, Xbox, PS3 and other devices. Unfortunately, you can't rip DVDs with RealPlayer, although this is available as a feature if you upgrade to RealPlayer Plus.

Most recently, RealPlayer has been updated with far better mobile and social networking integration. You can now copy your favorite videos to an iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry and dozens of other popular devices automatically. Downloading internet videos is faster, and for those of you with something to hide, RealPlayer offers a new Private folder. Social media has also been bumped up, with direct access to Facebook videos and usefully, a built-in feature to transfer videos to your mobile devices.

Quality

That said, RealPlayer isn't bad at all. It's comparable to Windows Media Player 12 as they both have some impressive ways of organizing your music. For me, the best feature is the CD burner which is something I've used from the early days of RealPlayer. The sheer quality of some of the media only available in Real formats makes RealPlayer an essential item in the toolkit of any fan of internet video and audio.

Conclusion

There's no shortage of media players theses days, and RealPlayer is by no means a bad option. It offers lots of features, good options and is a high-quality player that will do justice to your media. The only problem is that despite its modern features, it feels like a bit of a dinosaur. It's heavy and slow, looks chunky and takes an age to respond to clicks, and for many people - especially those who have experience of lighter options - it's just not the most comfortable player.

RealPlayer is a media player that, although powerful, has suffered from serious feature-creep over the years.

Download RealPlayer 16.0.2.232 in Softonic

Although Microsoft's Silverlight was originally conceived as a competitor to Adobe Flash, it now finds itself competing with Abobe's Web 2.0 platform, Adobe Air.

The harsh truth is, Microsoft Silverlight has already fallen considerably behind Adobe Air. In typically Microsoft style, the software giant's surely missed the boat, by aiming at a replacement for Adobe Flash when the web world was already shifting towards interactive Web 2.0 platforms such as Adobe Air.

Microsoft Silverlight is a lightweight plugin that allows you to watch Silverlight-based content in your browser. It works with most major browsers, including Firefox and Safari. There is no prompt to restart the browser after installation but I recommend you do so because the first site of Silverlight content I accessed after installation simply crashed the browser.

The most important improvements to the latest version are smoother streaming, DRM management, and an out-of browser player. The out-of browser player, however, is dependent on developers embracing it and as yet, there are few examples available. The smooth streaming feature will iron out many of the streaming programs that have plagued Microsoft Silverlight in the past. If your bandwidth drops below 3Mbps, smooth streaming will kick-in so that your video isn't affected.

Microsoft Silverlight can stream high resolution video well and supports HD-quality videos. If you want to create content for Silverlight, you'll need Expression Studio and Visual Studio. In fact, this latest release is is of particular interest to developers because it adds 60 customizable controls, new layout containers, 'deep linking' for page bookmarking, search engine optimization, and enhanced data support.

The signs are though that Microsoft has realized that the battle for web content is already being won by the much slicker and more stable Adobe Air platform and is therefore aiming Microsoft Silverlight at business users. The Silverlight homepage boasts 'Learn how Silverlight is right for your business', and that companies such as Continental Airlines have adopted Silverlight for use in their reservation system, showing that Microsoft knows which side its bread is buttered on.

Silverlight has probably missed the boat as far as Web 2.0 goes, although there's probably no way you can avoid it since there will always be some websites that opt to stream content with Silverlight rather than Flash.

Download Microsoft Silverlight 5.1.20125.0 in Softonic

Adobe Flash Player is an essential plugin for your browser that allows you to view everything from video to games and animation on the web.

Features

Adobe Flash Player 10 includes a range of interesting additions and improvements when compared to previous versions. Top of that list is the inclusion of support for the H.264 video codec and the HE-AAC audio codec, which together offer a much richer, higher-definition picture along with crystal-clear sound. Introducing these capabilities in Adobe Flash Player with only slightly reduced performance looks set to trigger another revolution in web video, as HD movies are already an important element on YouTube - and they look and sound great!

Quality

Adobe Flash Player 10 irons out some of the problems that previous versions have suffered from (like security and stability issues), as well including support for ActionScript 3.0. It also makes fantastic 3D graphics possible. This makes for more dynamic and interesting navigation, games and interactivity on websites.

Conclusion

Adobe Flash Player 10 represents a leap forward in terms of quality as well as stability and security. It's therefore a highly recommended download for all users.

Download Adobe Flash Player Firefox, Safari, Opera 11.8.800.42 (Firefox) in Softonic

Adobe Flash Player (originally a Macromedia product) remains the standard platform for viewing a wide variety of web content, varying from navigation elements to every video you watch on YouTube.

Some of the main reasons to use Adobe Flash Player are:

-simple to use
-high performance
-small file size
-near-HD quality

Additions and Improvements

Adobe Flash Player 10 includes a wide range of interesting additions and improvements when compared to previous versions. Some of these great new features include the inclusion of support for the H.264 video codec and the HE-AAC audio codec, which together offer a much richer, higher-definition picture and crystal-clear sound. By introducing these capabilities and only slightly impacting performance, Adobe Flash Player is set to encourage another revolution in web video, since HD movies are becoming standard on YouTube. They also look and sound fantastic!

Adobe Flash Player 10 also irons out some of the problems that previous versions have suffered from. These include previous security and stability issues. This update also includes support for ActionScript 3.0 and makes fantastic 3D graphics possible. This means more dynamic and interesting navigation, games and interactivity on websites.

Adobe Flash Player 11 represents a leap forward in terms of quality, stability and security.

Download Adobe Flash Player (for IE) 11.8.800.42 in Softonic

If you want to play in online games on your browser, there's a good chance you'll need Adobe ShockWave Player, the daddy of online action plug-ins.

After a simple install and restart of your browser, you'll be able to enjoy a large range of graphically impressive online experiences. Most of the time you won't notice Adobe ShockWave Player is even there, but like flash and other plug ins it should be one of your basic downloads after installing a browser.

Compared to other more recent plug-ins like Unity, Adobe ShockWave Player is quite resource heavy. We tried some online Shockwave things that really slowed down our system. However, while it's a platform developers continue to use, it's useful to have.

While Flash and Unity have probably superseded it in many places, Adobe ShockWave Player can still give you some enjoyable Web gaming.

Download Adobe ShockWave Player 12.0.0.112 in Softonic

It's hard to review something like Smart Installer Pack, because it's not really a software app in itself, but rather a collection of software apps.

Smart Installer Pack contains 24 popular software utilities, among which you can probably find the first five or ten you download on your computer after reinstalling your operating system. This is precisely the aim behind Smart Installer Pack: saving you the pain of having to search, download and install all those programs.

Smart Installer Pack includes Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo Widgets, Skype, Google Earth, Winamp, Firefox, BitTorrent, Gmail Notifier, Rocket Dock, a pack of codecs, Adobe Flash Player, Apple Quicktime, the Java Runtime, Adobe Reader, WinRAR, Open Office, Daemon Tools, Thunderbird, Gimp, Picasa, Avira Antivirus, Google Chrome, CCleaner and KMPlayer.

Of course, you don't have to install them all. Simply browse through the program's tabs and click on the icon of the program you're interested in. Installation will start right away.

Smart Installer Pack is certainly a handy tool that can save you lots of time. On the downside, you're obliged to download a huge file – no matter how many of those tools you'll use – and the programs included in the pack may not be updated to the latest version.

With Smart Installer Pack you can save a lot of time when downloading and installing your favorite software after an OS re-installation.

Download Smart Installer Pack 1.5 in Softonic

Like the original app, Photo Booth for Windows 7 includes a selection of special effects you can apply to the image on your webcam in real time, and then take a picture of it. Once the picture appears in the camera roll at the bottom of the window, you can save it to the hard drive or share it on Facebook and Twitter straight away.

The good thing about Photo Booth for Windows 7 is that it doesn’t require installation and is very easy to set up. All you need is Adobe Flash Player and a webcam. Then you can start applying effects and taking snapshots of yourself and your friends posing for the webcam.

Though Photo Booth for Windows 7 lacks some features found in the original program – such as background effects, or being able to record video – it’s still one of the best Photo Booth clones for Windows you can find these days.

Photo Booth for Windows 7 is an easy, addictive app with which to have fun with your webcam.

Download Photo Booth for Windows 7 1.0 in Softonic

We're not going to argue that Flash Player is exciting, but it is very important to ensure that you get the most from the internet. AAlternative Flash Player Auto-Updater does just what you would expect - it automatically updates your version of Flash Player, meaning that you don't have to lift a finger to stay up to date.

AAlternative Flash Player Auto-Updater is a very simple program to look at. The main interface shows a list of your browsers (32 and 64 bit), your version of Flash Player and the current version available. Whether or not you are up to date is colored-coded - red for out of date, yellow for beta versions, and green for all good. This check is performed every two hours by default, but you can do a check on the spot by clicking the relevant button.

For such a streamlined app. AAlternative Flash Player Auto-Updater has plenty of options. You can take your pick of two configuration screens where you'll be able to change things like the account AAlternative Flash Player Auto-Updater uses for installation, options for a proxy, the ability to change the frequency of auto-check, and more.

AAlternative Flash Player Auto-Updater is a handy app to have installed and on hand.

Download AAlternative Flash Player Auto-Updater 1.0.1.6 in Softonic

There's so much Flash video out there, especially on sites such as YouTube, that a converter which can change the format of the videos you are watching is always useful.

Maybe you need to change it for storage purposes or maybe you need to change it so that you can edit the footage. Whatever your needs, Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash is a professional piece of software that converts videos to Flash supporting all the most popular formats including AVI, MPEG, and WMV. The program focuses on converting AVI/MPEG video to Flash video (FLV) in high quality, in the least time. But even better than that, it also provides advanced video editing functions such as video cropping and trimming which is unusual for a program of this kind. Usually you only get a converter but here you are getting the complete package which is useful because Flash is not usually a very suitable format to edit in. However, the editor is very basic allowing you only to perform very basic cropping. It does however automatically generate thumbnail images for each file you convert and in addition, creates a self-opening Flash player which means you can send it on to friends or colleagues without them having to have a Flash player installed. If you're going to embed it in a webpage, it also generates HTML pages to embed them in which you can then upload much more easily and quickly than normal.

Fast and with very high quality output, Softhink Video Converter for Adobe Flash is one of the best Flash converters out there.

Download Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash 3.2 Build 70926 in Softonic

Flash Media Show allows you to present a selection of photos in Adobe Flash format, saving you hard drive space and gaining in design. The final presentation is eye catching with a very nice and clear navigation menu.

When you have finished, click on the Publish function in the File menu and choose the size of your presentation, the version of Flash it should be compatible with and the option of a full screen mode.