Difference b/w Adobe Flash and Shockwave Player

Internet has now become an unofficial synonym of omnipresent and has gained its popularity among all age groups. This has been possible because the internet has become a source of exchanging information combined with providing entertainment. The entertainment can be in the form of audio visuals, games animations or anything. So while playing an online game or watching the latest episode of your favorite TV series online, you might have come across Adobe Flash player and Shockwave Player or your browser might have pushed you to download it.

These two players have their own utility and they help to play different type of files on your web browser. To make it really simplistic Adobe Flash player is used to play any video on your browser while Shockwave Player helps your browser to run an online game. Both of these are supported by almost all the commonly used web browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari, Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. Still there is a lot of confusion between these two players, here, in this blog I will explain basic differences between them; this will help you easily differentiate between the two.

The Major Differences b/w Adobe Flash and Shockwave

Adobe Flash and Shockwave are two significantly different products of the same company, Adobe, working on same grounds. Shockwave is created by an application, Director, this has been around for quite a number of years, and relatively it has been there much before than internet possessed its modern form. Director’s origination was due to the need of dynamic content creation in CD-ROM’s, moreover, it is still used to perform the same job. With the enhancement in the need of dynamic content over the internet Director have become more advanced with the upgraded versions, it has included more features that adapt Shockwave file to be used on the web browser.

Talking about Adobe Flash, this was built up from the scratch to be specifically used on the Web. Later, Macromedia also adapted Flash from a vector art animation program, Future Splash animator. Although, Macromedia’s version was targeted to transmit the data over phone line connections using flash was then incorporated into it. Hence, Shockwave and Flash are two different products having their own sets of strengths and weaknesses which I will share next.

1. Shockwave files are slower to load when compared to Flash files
2. Shockwave is more versatile of the two i.e. complex games with higher interactivity and detailed animation better when created here.
3. Shockwave is better when comes to supporting other formats, for instance a Flash file can be imported into Shockwave whole vice versa is not possible.
4. Of the two Flash is to be found easily as more than 9o percent of Web users have Flash plug-in installed in their browsers while Shockwave is present on in about 60 percent of Web Browsers.
5. Creating Flash software costs lesser number of bucks as it costs around $400 while for Shockwave, Director alone costs around $1000.
6. Director uses a compiled file format to modify a particular so this includes a little of complexity when creating Shockwave programs while Flash is an open source format hence it is easier to use and modify on need.

As their software upgraded with newer versions, both Shockwave and Flash have moved closer to each other’s properties. As the comparison have told us, Flash is more versatile while Shockwave has enhanced capabilities with commencement of each newer version. Eventually, the two products are said to be merged in future, taking the best of both in a compressive single application.