Shockwave vs Flash: This thread at WebMasterWorld explores some of the differences, but needs a site-registration to reply... if you're a member there and can link to my entry in their thread, then I'd appreciate the favor, thanks! Otherwise, my bounce-offs to their conversation are available in the "more" section here....
What's the big difference between the Macromedia Flash and Shockwave Players? The former is designed for the widest possible distribution and easiest portability; the latter takes deeper advantage of Macintosh and Windows computers.
Where can I learn more? Try searching the Macromedia site with term "flash shockwave differences".
are there any stats on the installed bases of these. What % of browsers are shock & flash enabled? See stats for comparative immediate consumer viewership... Macromedia Flash Player version comparison... Macromedia Shockwave Player version comparison... info on the NPD Consumer Audit's methodology.... some of the browser and operating system bundles that have shipped... some of the non-computer partner bundles.
What's the practical difference today? The mind-boggling realworld distribution of the Macromedia Flash Player has made it the default for web work. The Macromedia Shockwave Player is still used in browsers for heavy-lifting tasks (most popular live 3D engine, much wider range of media types, native code extensibility and more), but Director's standalones are where most of the seems to be these days. (The standalone "projectors" of Macromedia Flash and derivative engines have nothing approaching Director's memory-management and media-management... Macromedia Flash is oriented towards web-sized loads.)
What's with the "Shockwave Flash" name? Macromedia Director had one of the first web players, announced a week or so after Netscape announced its plugin mechanism for the 2.0 version. "Shockwave" was a very, very big name, with lots of consumer recognition. When Macromedia and FutureWave's FutureSplash Animator joined forces, the authoring tool was renamed to "Macromedia Flash" and the file format was renamed from .SPL to .SWF, which some informally called "Shockwave Flash" to join the existing "Shockwave for FreeHand" (still vectors), "Shockwave for Authorware" (eLearning), "Shockwave for xRes" (high-res image tiling), "Shockwave Audio" (first widespread .MP3 engine) and so on. "Shockwave" was used for its popular brand name, to introduce the rarer Flash and other players. But the big problem with plugins is distribution, and over the years only the Director and Flash engines gained widespread capability in consumers' browsers... towards the late 1990s these became the Macromedia Shockwave Player and the Macromedia Flash Player, and the various "Shockwave for X" monikers went away.
Aren't Flash files a lot smaller than Shockwave files? Not necessarily... it's hard to compare apples and oranges. Vector artwork can usually cover large screen areas more effectively than pixel artwork, but the latter can usually handle detail more efficiently than vectors. Shockwave uses a variety of decompression schemes, and (surprisingly) a simple SWF will usually be smaller when embedded in a Director movie than when delivered on its own. The streaming methods differ too. Designing the piece to make best use of the technology is the real differentiator for final user experience.
So what does "SWF" stand for?" Nothing, it's not an acronym... the "MX" in "Macromedia MX" isn't an acronym either. At some point some said SWF was an acronym for "Shockwave Flash", and at other times some said SWF was an acronym for "Small Web Format" or variants, but these were not official terms published on the Macromedia site.
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