Gliding

Gliding is a technique that was introduced in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and was originally present in Super Smash Flash 2. It allowed the character to move through the air at a fast pace without losing much vertical height in the process. The player could angle the glide downwards to dive, increasing speed but losing height, or upwards to climb, gaining height but losing speed. It was possible to stall the glide and end it prematurely if the player attempted to climb too high. Once gliding, the character could not turn around until the glide ended.

From v0.6 to v0.8b of the Super Smash Flash 2 Demo, had the ability to do a glide attack, and from v0.9a to v0.9b,  had the ability to do a glide attack after using his up special move, Shuttle Loop.

The floating and hovering abilities are similar to gliding, in that they dramatically increase one's horizontal recovery. However, floating has a time limit, and both have free horizontal movement and no vertical movement.

Glide attack
A glide attack was an attack originally present in Super Smash Flash 2 that could be performed while gliding by pressing the attack button. However, after using a glide attack, the character would stop gliding and could go to helpless state, if they had already used all of their midair jumps, or, in Meta Knight's case, if doing it after using Shuttle Loop.