Adobe Shockwave

Shockwave refers to a file format (*. Dcr ) the software company Adobe. It was originally manufactured and sold until 2006 by Macromedia. It contains interactive content created with Adobe Director, and can be played in a web browser using the free Shockwave Player.

Shockwave content could and can be produced only with the development of software Adobe Director. There is often confusion with the file format (*. Swf) from Flash. Shockwave Flash files can contain files and play (depending on the version). Flash on the other hand can not play Shockwave content.

Shockwave files are characterized by a high and by the author partly influenced compression. This is useful in order to make rich content with short charging time on the internet can. In Shockwave files, for example, sounds can Audio ( SWA) encoded in MP3 format, or in the MP3 version Shockwave and images are compressed as JPEGs, among others. More files and content can be loaded dynamically ( streaming). One advantage of Shockwave Flash has long been compared to the hardware acceleration of 3D content, making detailed models can be calculated in real time. Since the end of 2011 but also offers a flash hardware support for 3D elements ( "Stage 3D" ).

The Shockwave plug-in for Windows and Mac can be downloaded for free from Adobe and easy to install in many browsers. Unlike Flash, however, is no plugin available for Linux. For Mac OS X platforms with Intel processor for a long time a plugin was available, so that all current Apple computers were no longer directly supported from mid-2006. Since March 2008 ( version 11) Intel Macs are supported.

Prior to the integration of ActionScript in Adobe Flash Shockwave was the only way to offer interactive content as Flash was initially designed only for animations with simple control functions.