Flash player plays flash movies (made in Flash) Shockwave plays shockwave movies (made in Director) They have nothing in common other than both are Adobe products, and both play there own interactive animated movies. Here’s Adobe’s Flash Player updates page. a) Can you explain what the difference is between a Flash Player and a > Shockwave Player.

So it’s important to make sure your Flash Player is kept up to date. It’s possible with some browsers to block Flash entirely, but with other browsers such as Internet Explorer it is not. More than 90 percent of Web users have the Flash plugin installed, while a little less than 60 percent have the Shockwave plug-in.įlash Player often contains security vulnerabilities. You could, for example, import a Flash file into a Shockwave movie, but it doesn’t work the other way around – you can’t play Shockwave file in a Flash Player.įlash is more universal. Shockwave Flash is actually an “authoring tool” that is used to create content for websites, such as games. You can use more types of files with Shockwave. Google Chrome even integrates the player into its distribution, which means you never have to worry about updating it. Your browser uses the Adobe Flash Player to watch movies, stream audio, play games, and even interact with some web pages. Flash Player is freely available as a plugin for recent versions of web browsers (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari) on selected platforms. In a nutshell, Flash usually need to play YouTube video on your computer, and the way to do this is to install the Adobe Flash Player. Retiring the Shockwave player for Windows is the last step in a multi-year process: Adobe Director, an authoring tool for Shockwave content, was discontinued on 1 February 2017 and the Shockwave player for macOS was discontinued on 1 March 2017. If you think they are the same thing, you might be wrong!įirst of all, Flash (or, more correctly “Adobe Flash”, and in the past “Macromedia Flash” before Adobe acquired the company) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Adobe Shockwave is a browser-based multimedia platform for interactive applications and video games.

You may have heard of “Flash” and “Shockwave Flash”.

Shockwave vs adobe flash player