Adobe Shockwave

Adobe Shockwave (formerly Macromedia Shockwave) is a multimedia platform used to add animation and interactivity to web pages. It allows Adobe Director applications to be published on the Internet and viewed in a web browser on any computer which has the Shockwave plug-in installed. It was first developed by Macromedia, and released in 1995 and was later acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Unlike the Adobe Flash Player, the Adobe Shockwave Player is not commonly bundled with web browsers; if needed it must be downloaded Shockwave movies are authored in the Adobe Director environment. While there is support for including Flash movies inside Shockwave files, authors often choose the Shockwave Director combination over Flash because it offers more features and more powerful tools. Features not replicated by Flash include a much faster rendering engine, and support for various network protocols, including Internet Relay Chat. Also, Shockwave's functionality can be extended with "Xtras". Unlike Flash, the Shockwave browser plugin is not at all available for Linux or Solaris 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 (with varying degrees of success). It is also possible to use Shockwave in the native Linux version of FireFox by using the Pipelight plugin, which is based on a modified version of Wine. Shockwave was available as a plug-in for both Mac OS and Windows for most of its history. However, there was a notable break in support for the Macintosh between January 2006 (when Apple Inc. released Apple–Intel transition based on the Intel Core Duo) and March 2008 (when Adobe Systems released Shockwave 11, the first version to run natively on Intel Macs). Although Shockwave was designed for making a wide variety of online movies and animations, its actual use has become concentrated in the area of game development. It is often used in online applications which require a very rich graphical environment. Online Learning tools which simulate real-world physics or involve significant graphing, charting, or calculation sometimes use Shockwave. 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 since coincided with the release of Director since version 5 Its versioning also has since been tied to Director's and 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 standalone 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 at the Wayback Machine (archived January 3, 1997). Shockwave 2 Shockwave 3 Shockwave 4 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. Shockwave 11 Added support for Intel-based Macs. Shockwave 12 Unknown Shockwave 12.1 Latest version