Difference between Adobe Flash Player and Shockwave Player

Oct 15, 2013

What is the difference between Adobe Flash Player and Shockwave Player? If you have used web browsers before, I’m sure that you are familiar with the terms Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Shockwave Player. These two are important tools that enables us to watch videos online, play games and enjoy interactive web applications. But how they differ from each other? Want to know about the difference between Adobe Flash and Shockwave Player? If yes, continue reading.

Adobe Flash Player:

Flash Player

Adobe Flash Player is a free web player, which can play multimedia, rich internet applications and streaming media. It was originally developed by Macromedia and was known as Macromedia Flash. Flash player runs on web browsers (as a plugin), desktop and selected mobile devices. Content played by Flash Player are created on Adobe Flash platform.

Adobe Shockwave Player:

Shockwave Player

Adobe Shockwave player is also a free web player. It was originally developed for the Netscape browser by Macromedia and was known as Macromedia Shockwave. Shockwave player can run as a browser plug-in or as a standalone application. It was designed to run rich and high-performance web content such as interactive 3D product demos, online training modules, complex charting and multi-user games. Shockwave plays movies authored in the Adobe Director environment.

Difference between Adobe Shockwave and Flash Player:

  1. Flash Player plays content that are created with Adobe Flash and Flex. But, Shockwave Player movies are created in Adobe Director environment.
  2. When it comes to features, Shockwave Player is more powerful than Flash Player. It can do several things which can’t be done by Flash Player. Example: Shockwave can play complex custom-built applications.
  3. Adobe Shockwave Player package also includes Adobe Flash Player. So, when you download Shockwave Player, you automatically download Flash Player!

More Info:

Official Adobe Flash Player Page

Official Adobe Shockwave Player Page

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