 |
Is there a difference in Shockwave and Flash? The short answer is Yes. Next is the long answer. |
Flash and Shockwave are two browser plugins made by Adobe. Many people think that they are the same thing because of some confusion that occurred after Adobe purchased Macromedia a while back.
Shockwave came out first in 1995 as a way to play back animations, small programs and multimedia content from a Web page. Flash came out some years later labeled as “Shockwave Flash”. The finished Flash project file has a .swf extension which also helps in the confusion.
Adobe Director is the program that is used to produce Shockwave applications and multimedia. A vector animation program called Adobe Flash is used to make files such as small movies and Flash is used to play me back.
Shockwave is the most robust of the two. If you need to build projects with a 3 dimensional look to it you will have to go with Shockwave. Flash though is the current king of the 2D web project player and can be found on nearly every modern computer.
Thanks – I’ve been wondering what the difference was between those two. Great explanation!
Have you worked with either one of them? I’m thinking of adding some flash animations to my website.