Adobe Shockwave Player (formerly Macromedia Shockwave Player, and also known as Shockwave for Director) is a discontinued

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

plug-in for viewing

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

and

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...

created on the

Adobe Shockwave Adobe Shockwave (formerly Macromedia Shockwave and MacroMind Shockwave) is a discontinued multimedia platform for building interactive multimedia applications and video games. Developers originate content using Adobe Director and publish it on ...

platform in web pages. Content was developed with

Adobe Director Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director, MacroMind Director, and MacroMind VideoWorks) was a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and managed by Adobe Systems until its discontinuation. Director was the primary edi ...

and published on the Internet. Such content could be viewed in a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

on any computer with the Shockwave Player plug-in installed. It was first developed by

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...

and released in 1995; it was later acquired by

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the cre ...

in 2005. Shockwave Player ran DCR files published by the

environment. Shockwave Player supported

raster graphics upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

, basic

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display ...

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum * Digital audio, representation of sou ...

, and an embedded scripting language called

Lingo Lingo, a contraction of language, often refers to jargon, but in a less formal or technical sense. Lingo may also refer to: Technology * Lingo (programming language), one of several unrelated programming languages * Lingo (VoIP Service operator ...

. Hundreds of free online video games were developed using Shockwave, and published on websites such as Miniclip and Shockwave.com. As of July 2011, a survey found that Flash Player had 99% market penetration in desktop browsers in "mature markets" (United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand), while Shockwave Player claimed only 41% in these markets. As of 2015,

Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the ...

is a suitable alternative to Shockwave Player, with its 3D rendering capabilities and

object-oriented programming language Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

. Flash Player cannot display Shockwave content, and Shockwave Player cannot display Flash content. In February 2019, Adobe announced that Adobe Shockwave, including the Shockwave Player, would be discontinued in April 2019. The final update for Adobe Shockwave Player was released on March 15, 2019. Shockwave Player is no longer available for download (as of October 8, 2019), and it cannot be used anymore since web browsers have blocked the Shockwave Player plug-in upon its discontinuation.

History

The Shockwave player was originally developed for the

Netscape browser Netscape Browser (or ''Netscape 8'') is the eighth major release of the Netscape series of web browsers, now all discontinued. It was published by AOL, but developed by Mercurial Communications, and originally released for Windows on May 19, 20 ...

by Macromedia Director team members Harry Chesley, John Newlin,

Sarah Allen Sarah Allen is a Canadian actress. She studied acting at the National Theatre School of Canada and graduated in 2002. ''Being Human'' Allen is perhaps best known for playing vampire Rebecca Flynt on SyFy Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel ...

, and Ken Day, influenced by a previous plug-in that Macromedia had created for Microsoft's Blackbird. Version 1.0 of Shockwave was released independent of Director 4 and its development schedule has coincided with the release of Director since version 5. Its version has since been tied to Director's, thus there were no Shockwave 2–4 releases. ;Shockwave 1: The Shockwave plug-in for Netscape Navigator 2.0 was released in 1995, along with the stand-alone Afterburner utility to compress Director files for Shockwave playback. The first large-scale multimedia site to use Shockwave was Intel's 25th Anniversary of the Microprocessor. ;Shockwave 5: Afterburner is integrated into the Director 5.0 authoring tool as an Xtra. ;Shockwave 6: Added support for Shockwave Audio (swa) which consisted of the emerging MP3 file format with some additional headers. ;Shockwave 7: Added support for linked media including images and casts. : Added support for Shockwave Multiuser Server. ;Shockwave 8.5: Added support for Intel's 3D technologies including rendering. ;Shockwave 9: ;Shockwave 10: Last version to support

Mac OS X 10.3 Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X Jaguar and preceded Mac OS X Tiger. It was released on October 24, 2003. System requirements Panther's sy ...

and lower, and

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth major release of Apple's classic Mac OS operating system which was succeeded by Mac OS X (renamed to OS X in 2011 and macOS in 2016) in 2001. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet ...

. ;Shockwave 11: Added support for Intel-based Macs. ;Shockwave 12: ;Shockwave 12.1: It is supported by 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8. It has content made from previous versions as well as Director MX 2004. From version 12.1.5.155 Shockwave is supported in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. ;Shockwave 12.2: Last update for macOS before discontinuation. ;Shockwave 12.3: Last update before overall discontinuation.

Platform support

Shockwave was available as a plug-in for the

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, and 32 bit

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

for most of its history. However, there was a notable break in support for the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

between January 2006 (when Apple Inc. began the

Mac transition to Intel processors Apple transitioned the CPUs of their Mac and Xserve computers from PowerPC to the x86 architecture from Intel. The change was announced at the 2005 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) by then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who said Apple would g ...

based on the Intel Core Duo) and March 2008 (when Adobe Systems released Shockwave 11, the first version to run natively on Intel Macs). Unlike Flash Player, Shockwave Player is not available for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

or Solaris despite intense lobbying efforts. However, the Shockwave Player can be installed on Linux with

CrossOver Crossover may refer to: Entertainment Albums and songs * ''Cross Over'' (Dan Peek album) * ''Crossover'' (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles album), 1987 * ''Crossover'' (Intrigue album) * ''Crossover'' (Hitomi Shimatani album) * ''Crossover'' (Yoshino ...

(or by running a Windows version of a supported browser in

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented grapes. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different ...

with varying degrees of success). It is also possible to use Shockwave Player in the native Linux version of

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

by using the Pipelight plugin (which is based on a modified version of Wine). In 2017, the authoring tool for Shockwave content, Adobe Director, was discontinued on February 1; and the following month, Shockwave Player for macOS was officially discontinued. In February 2019, Adobe announced that Shockwave Player would be officially discontinued and unsupported on Microsoft Windows, the last OS that supported the Shockwave Player, effective April 9, 2019.

Security

Some security experts advise users to uninstall Adobe Shockwave Player because "it bundles a component of Adobe Flash that is more than 15 months behind on security updates, and which can be used to backdoor virtually any computer running it", in the words of

Brian Krebs Brian Krebs (born 1972) is an American journalist and investigative reporter. He is best known for his coverage of profit-seeking cybercriminals.Perlroth, Nicole.Reporting From the Web's Underbelly. ''The New York Times''. Retrieved February 28, ...

. This opinion is based on research by Will Dormann, who goes on to say that Shockwave is architecturally flawed because it contains a separate version of the Flash runtime that is updated much less often than Flash itself. Additionally Krebs writes that "Shockwave has several modules that don't opt in to trivial exploit mitigation techniques built into Microsoft Windows, such as SafeSEH."

Branding and name confusion

In an attempt to raise its brand profile, all Macromedia players prefixed ''Shockwave'' to their names in the late 1990s. Although this campaign was successful and helped establish Shockwave Flash as a multimedia plugin, Shockwave and Flash became more difficult to maintain as separate products. In 2005, Macromedia marketed three distinct browser player plugins under the brand names Macromedia Authorware, Macromedia Shockwave, and Macromedia Flash. Macromedia also released a web browser plug-in for viewing

Macromedia FreeHand Adobe FreeHand (formerly Macromedia FreeHand and Aldus FreeHand) was a computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeH ...

files online. It was branded Macromedia Shockwave for FreeHand and displayed specially compressed .fhc Freehand files. Later, with the acquisition of

, Adobe Systems slowly began to

rebrand Rebranding is a marketing strategy in which a new name, term, symbol, design, concept or combination thereof is created for an established brand with the intention of developing a new, differentiated identity in the minds of consumers, investors ...

all products related to Shockwave.

References

External links

Adobe Shockwave Player

- What's the difference between Shockwave and Flash? (dated 2004)

{{Adobe Systems 1995 software

Shockwave Player Adobe Shockwave Player (formerly Macromedia Shockwave Player, and also known as Shockwave for Director) is a discontinued freeware software plug-in for viewing multimedia and video games created on the Adobe Shockwave platform in web pages. ...

Animation software Graphics file formats

Multimedia frameworks Macintosh multimedia software MacOS multimedia software Products and services discontinued in 2019 Windows multimedia software