flash (macromedia): I am not sure about the Flash Player and the Shockwave player differences and how a Shockwave file is created.

At first I thought it was simple: a .fla played in Flash players and a .swf played in Shockwave player. But, I am not sure.

Thanks for a reply.

Q - How are ShockWave movies created? With Flash?
A - With Director


It's interesting how hard it is to figure that out. I was confused for awhile myself, untill I got Flash and did some reasearch. Here's the breakdown:

There are two different players:
1)Flash Player and 2)Shockwave Player

There are two authoring environments(apps) to create movies for each player:
1)Macromedia Flash and 2)Director

MM Flash creates .swf movies
Director creates shockwave movies

For Flash, .fla is the authoring file, .swf is the final movie, both are created by MM Flash, and only the movie(swf) is played in the Flash Player. .fla is to .swf as .jpg is to .psd

So basicallly, Flash creates movies for the Flash Player and Director creates movies for the Shockwave Player.
It would make sense that Director be called Shockwave, but MM just chose to give it a different name unlike Flash.

As far as the difference between the two, the simplest way of describing it is Shockwave(made with Director) is more advanced but harder to create than Flash.


HTH

-beally-
-------------------------
"Senior Member" - experienced at messing things up

Excellent, thanks for the reply.

Now I have to decide if I'm depressed about this or not. I just spent the $999.00 (or so) to be a Macromedia DevNet Professional Subscription member and I can not make Shockwave movies.

Why would they suck so much money and not have a complete 'Professional Subscription'? I feel like 1/2 a Pro again :(