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

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

plug-in for

web browsers A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application 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 scree ...

enabling interaction with

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

and

video games A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

created for the Adobe Shockwave platform on

web page A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...

s. Content developed with Director and published on the Internet could be viewed on any computer with the

freeware Freeware is software, 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 free ...

plug-in installed. First developed by

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc. was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Adobe Flash, Flash and Adobe Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its riv ...

and released in 1995, it was later acquired along with other Macromedia assets by

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

in 2005. Shockwave Player ran DCR files published by the

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 ed ...

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 are 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 displ ...

3D graphics 3D computer 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 the purposes of perfor ...

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 sound ...

, and an embedded scripting language called Lingo. 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. Flash Player was used as an alternative to Shockwave Player, with its more advanced 3D rendering capabilities and

object-oriented programming language Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impleme ...

. 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 most major web browsers blocked the Shockwave Player plug-in from being used upon its discontinuation.

History

The Shockwave player was originally developed for the Netscape browser by Macromedia Director team members Harry Chesley, John Newlin, Sarah Allen, 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 and lower, and

Mac OS 9 Mac OS 9 is the ninth and final major release of the classic Mac OS operating system for Macintosh computers, made by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 23, 1999, it was promoted by Apple as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever", highlight ...

. ;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 Mac (computer), Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and end ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, and 32 bit

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

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

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

between January 2006 (when

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

began the Mac transition to Intel processors 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 ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

despite intense lobbying efforts. However, the Shockwave Player can be installed on Linux with CrossOver (or by running a Windows version of a supported browser in

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

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 curr ...

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 2 ...

. 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 Adobe Authorware (previously Macromedia Authorware, originally Authorware) is a discontinued e-learning authoring tool with its own interpreted, flowchart-based, graphical programming language. Authorware was used for creating interactive e-le ...

, 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) is a discontinued computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the W ...

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