Adobe Shockwave Player

Last updated

Adobe Shockwave Player
Adobe Shockwave Player logo.png
Original author(s) Macromedia
Developer(s) Adobe Inc.
Final release
12.3.5.205 (Win) / March 15, 2019;2 years ago (2019-03-15) [1]
Operating system Microsoft Windows, macOS
Platform Web browsers
Type Multimedia Player / MIME type: application/x-director
License Freeware
Website helpx.adobe.com/shockwave/shockwave-end-of-life-faq.html

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. Content was developed with Adobe Director and published on the Internet. Such content could be viewed in a web browser on any computer with the Shockwave Player plug-in installed. It was first developed by Macromedia and released in 1995; it was later acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. [2]

Contents

Shockwave Player ran DCR files published by the Adobe Director environment. Shockwave Player supported raster graphics, basic vector graphics, 3D graphics, audio, and an embedded scripting language called Lingo. [3] [4] Hundreds of free online video games were developed using Shockwave, and published on websites such as Miniclip and Shockwave.com. [5]

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. [6] As of 2015, Flash Player is a suitable alternative to Shockwave Player, with its 3D rendering capabilities and object-oriented programming language. Flash Player cannot display Shockwave content, and Shockwave Player cannot display Flash content. [7]

In February 2019, Adobe announced that Adobe Shockwave, including the Shockwave Player, would be discontinued in April 2019. [8] 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 [8] ), and it cannot be used anymore since web browsers have blocked the Shockwave Player plug-in upon its discontinuation. [9]

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.[ citation needed ] 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. [10]
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
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. [11]
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, macOS, and 32 bit Windows for most of its history. However, there was a notable break in support for the Macintosh between January 2006 (when Apple Inc. 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 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 Player in the native Linux version of Firefox 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. [8]

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. 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. [12] 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." [13] [14]

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,[ citation needed ] 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 files online. It was branded Macromedia Shockwave for FreeHand and displayed specially compressed .fhc Freehand files. [15]

Later, with the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe Systems slowly began to rebrand all products related to Shockwave.[ clarification needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

Adobe Flash is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash displays text, vector graphics, and raster graphics to provide animations, video games, and applications. It allowed streaming of audio and video, and can capture mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera input.

Adobe Photoshop Raster graphics editing software

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in raster graphics editing, but in digital art as a whole. The software's name has thus become a generic trademark, leading to its usage as a verb although Adobe discourages such use. Photoshop can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositing and several color models including RGB, CMYK, CIELAB, spot color, and duotone. Photoshop uses its own PSD and PSB file formats to support these features. In addition to raster graphics, Photoshop has limited abilities to edit or render text and vector graphics, as well as 3D graphics and video. Its feature set can be expanded by plug-ins; programs developed and distributed independently of Photoshop that run inside it and offer new or enhanced features.

Adobe Creative Suite

Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is a discontinued software suite of graphic design, video editing, and web development applications developed by Adobe Systems. Each edition consisted of several Adobe applications, such as Photoshop, Acrobat, Premiere Pro or After Effects, InDesign, and Illustrator, which became industry standard applications for many graphic design positions.

SWF is an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function. They may also occur in programs, commonly browser games, using ActionScript.

Adobe Shockwave is a discontinued multimedia platform for building interactive multimedia applications and video games. Developers originate content using Adobe Director and publish it on the Internet. Such content could be viewed in a web browser on any computer with the Shockwave Player plug-in installed. MacroMind originated the technology; Macromedia acquired MacroMind and developed it further, releasing Shockwave Player in 1995. Adobe then acquired Shockwave with Macromedia in 2005. Shockwave supports raster graphics, basic vector graphics, 3D graphics, audio, and an embedded scripting language called Lingo.

A rich web application is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software. The concept is closely related to a single-page application, and may allow the user interactive features such as drag and drop, background menu, WYSIWYG editing, etc. The concept was first introduced in 2002 by Macromedia to describe Macromedia Flash MX product. Throughout the 2000-s, the term was generalized to describe web applications developed with other competing browser plugin technologies including Java applets, Microsoft Silverlight.

Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is an application programming interface (API) of the Web Browsers that allows plugins to be integrated.

Adobe Flash Player is computer software for content created on the Adobe Flash platform. Flash Player is capable of viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video. In addition, Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices. Flash Player was created by Macromedia and has been developed and distributed by Adobe Systems since Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005. Flash Player is distributed as freeware. With the exception of the China-specific and enterprise supported variants, Flash Player was discontinued on 31 December 2020, and its download page disappeared two days later. Since 12 January 2021, Flash Player versions newer than 32.0.0.371, released in May 2020, refuse to play Flash content and instead display a static warning message.

Adobe Flash Lite

Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems for viewing Flash content. Flash Lite operates on devices that Flash Player cannot, such as mobile phones and other portable electronic devices like Wii, Chumby and Iriver.

A number of vector graphics editors exist for various platforms. Potential users of these editors will make a comparison of vector graphics editors based on factors such as the availability for the user's platform, the software license, the feature set, the merits of the user interface (UI) and the focus of the program. Some programs are more suitable for artistic work while others are better for technical drawings. Another important factor is the application's support of various vector and bitmap image formats for import and export.

Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Users include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.

Gnash (software)

Gnash is a media player for playing SWF files. Gnash is available both as a standalone player for desktop computers and embedded devices, as well as a plugin for several browsers. It is part of the GNU Project and is a free and open-source alternative to Adobe Flash Player. It was developed from the gameswf project.

SoundEdit

SoundEdit was the first popular GUI-based audio editor for digitized audio. It was one of the first significant audio applications for personal computers in general.

Microsoft Silverlight Application framework for writing and running rich Internet applications

Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a very small number of browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation, and gave support to developers for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.

Adobe Director

Adobe Director was a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and managed by Adobe Systems until its discontinuation.

ShiVa3D is a 3D game engine with a graphical editor designed to create applications and video games for desktop PCs, the web, game consoles and mobile devices. Games made with ShiVa can be exported to over 20 target platforms, with new export targets being added regularly.

Google Chrome Web browser developed by Google

Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. It was later ported to Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of Chrome OS, where it serves as the platform for web applications.

HTML5 can be used as an alternative to some of the functionality of Adobe Flash. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages. Flash is specifically built to integrate vector graphics and light games in a web page, features that HTML5 also supports.

Puffin Browser Web browser

Puffin Browser is a subscription-based web browser developed by CloudMosa, an American mobile technology company founded by Shioupyn Shen.

References

  1. ↑ "Adobe Shockwave Player". April 10, 2019. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
  2. ↑ Elia, Eric (1996). "Macromedia unveils Shockwave and Director 5". Newmedia. HyperMedia Communications. ISSN   1060-7188 . Retrieved September 23, 2010.
  3. ↑ Macromedia Shockwave for Director User's Guide, Volume 1, New Riders Pub., January 1, 1996
  4. ↑ Macromedia Shockwave for Director, Volume 1, Hayden Books, 1996
  5. ↑ "Shockwave.com". Archived from the original on May 28, 2015. Retrieved May 28, 2015.
  6. ↑ "Flash content reaches 99% of Internet viewers". Adobe. Archived from the original on October 2, 2011. Retrieved August 7, 2014.
  7. ↑ "What is Adobe Flash Player | FAQ | Adobe Flash Player".
  8. 1 2 3 "End of Life (EOL) for Adobe Shockwave". helpx.adobe.com. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
  9. ↑ Hoffman, Chris. "End of an Era: Adobe Shockwave Dies Today". How-To Geek. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
  10. ↑ "Intel's 25th Anniversary of the Microprocessor". Archived from the original on January 3, 1997. Retrieved November 17, 2017.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  11. ↑ "LANDESK Patch News Bulletin: Adobe has Released Shockwave Player Version 12.1.1.151(executable install) for Windows 24-APR-2014". Landesk. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
  12. ↑ Pauli, Darren (May 23, 2014). "Shockwave shocker: Plugin includes un-patched version of Flash". The Register. Archived from the original on May 23, 2014.
  13. ↑ Krebs, Brian (May 21, 2014). "Why You Should Ditch Adobe Shockwave". Krebs on Security blog. Archived from the original on May 25, 2014.
  14. ↑ Goodin, Dan (May 21, 2014). "Adobe Shockwave bundles Flash that's 15 months behind on security fixes". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on May 22, 2014.
  15. ↑ Perry Board; Rick Luna; Derek O'Dell (1996). "Chapter 20 - Shockwave for Freehand". Creating Shockwave Web Pages. Que Corporation. ISBN   0-7897-0903-1. Archived from the original on February 9, 2008. Retrieved March 30, 2008.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.