Gliding

Gliding is a technique that was introduced in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and was originally present in Super Smash Flash 2. It allowed characters to move through the air at a fast pace without losing much vertical height in the process. It is performed by holding the jump button after midair jumping.

The player could angle the glide downwards to dive, or upwards to climb. It was possible to stall the glide, as well as end it prematurely, if the player tried to climb above the glide activating point. Once gliding, the character could not turn around until the glide ended.

had the ability to glide out of a midair jump — called a jump glide — from v0.6 to v0.7 of the Super Smash Flash 2 Demo, while could do it only in v0.9a. However, they would instantly go into their gliding animation after using their up special move; until v0.8b, in Sora's case, and until v0.9b, in Meta Knight's.

The floating and hovering abilities are similar to gliding, in that they dramatically increase one's horizontal recovery. However, hovering allows the player to turn backwards, floating halts vertical momentum, and both of those can be cancelled into any aerial, instead of having their own type of aerial attack, which is explained in the section below.

Glide attack
The glide attack was an attack originally present in Super Smash Flash 2 that could be performed while gliding by pressing the attack button. However, if a character glided out of their up special move, they would go to the helpless state. Meta Knight would also become helpless if he tried to glide attack after using his last midair jump.

As Meta Knight, trying to jump glide would instead make him execute either his forward aerial or his down aerial, depending on whether or not the down direction is being pressed. He could also cancel the glide into back and up aerials via the C-Stick buttons, however.

Trying to perform the glide attack as Sora would always make him use his forward aerial.