Flash and Shockwave, What's the Difference?
SMW Staff Writer
December 23, 1999

A Brief Introduction

A long time ago, back in the reign of Netscape, plug-ins roamed the web. Most of these, were just useless video plug-ins, that served more as a nuisance than a benefit. Among the better plug-ins was one called Shockwave.

Shockwave was created by Macromedia, to enable webbers to view Macromedia Director content directly in their browser. At the time, the plug-in was not very widespread.

In time, Macromedia acquired a small emerging company called "Futuresplash". Futuresplash was also the name of their main program, a piece of animation software intended to create animated GIF banners for the web. Along with Futuresplash, came the Futuresplash Player, which upon download, could play small compact web-animations created by the Futuresplash program.

Upon acquisition, Macromedia quickly updated and renamed the program to Flash 2, and the plug-in to Shockwave Flash Player. That, was when all the confusion began...

Flash and Shockwave comparison

Director (creates Shockwave files)

Created before the current success of the World Wide Web, (www), Director's main function was to create off-line multimedia productions, like interactive CD-roms, presentations, or other visual stand alone programs.

Utilizing advanced Lingo scripting [Lingo is Director's native programming language], Director's possibilities were huge, and the software quickly became near industry-standard in it's area. Even today, interactive CD-roms are commonly created using Director.

However, Director was not originally built for the web, and therefore lacks some important features. For instance, the filesize of Director content is distinctively larger than that of Flash content.