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Why does Mozilla.com Support speak of Adobe Flash, but Add-ons>Plugins says Shockwave Flash?

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  • 4 views
  • Last reply by AliceWyman

RxDdude
RxDdude
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Hi, are there two brands of Flash Players, namely, one by Adobe and another by Macromedia/ Shockwave?

It is confusing to read of Adobe Flash issues, as we see on Mozilla's Support Home Page,* while my Plugins list in Add-ons does not have Adobe Flash but does have Shockwave Flash and Shockwave for Director listed as plugins. Please answer the following questions.

A. Does Adobe make both Adobe Flash and Shockwave Flash plugins, and does Adobe Flash Player install either or both? B. Does Adobe make Shockwave for Director? C. What does Shockwave for Director do for Firefox, that is different from Shockwave Flash? D. And, finally, what is Director, anyway? What is Director, that Shockwave is "for," and what does Director do for Firefox?

Hi, are there two brands of Flash Players, namely, one by Adobe and another by Macromedia/ Shockwave? It is confusing to read of Adobe Flash issues, as we see on Mozilla's Support Home Page,* while my Plugins list in Add-ons does not have Adobe Flash but does have Shockwave Flash and Shockwave for Director listed as plugins. Please answer the following questions. A. Does Adobe make both Adobe Flash and Shockwave Flash plugins, and does Adobe Flash Player install either or both? B. Does Adobe make Shockwave for Director? C. What does Shockwave for Director do for Firefox, that is different from Shockwave Flash? D. And, finally, what is Director, anyway? What is Director, that Shockwave is "for," and what does Director do for Firefox? * http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Firefox+Support+Home+Page

Modified by RxDdude

All Replies (4)

cor-el
cor-el
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Flash Shockwave Flash and Shockwave for Director are two different products, both are now owned and maintained by Adobe.
The two player were originally developed by Macromedia and at some point Adobe took over all products from Macromedia.

See these Wikipedia articles about the history of Adobe/Macromedia Flash and Shockwave for Director:

Modified by cor-el

AlanBaxter
AlanBaxter
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In addition to what cor-el said, Adobe Flash and Shockwave Flash both refer to the same player, commonly known as just Flash.

Blacklisted
Blacklisted
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There are separate download pages on the Adobe website for Adobe Flash Player and for Adobe Shockwave Player, respectively. There is one button for each on the main Adobe downloads page (http://www.adobe.com/downloads/) As far as I can tell, they don't have the same version numbers. I am not sure which one is updated "automatically" by Adobe but it appears to be Adobe Flash Player.

Adobe Flash Player does not appear on the Firefox add-ons list because it is neither a "plug-in" nor an "extension". Adobe Shockwave Player is listed as a plug-in. I haven't seen Adobe Shockwave for Director on the plug-ins list for a long time and I have no idea whether it is still available (whether it is used now, it was required for playing some games on some websites that I no longer visit).

Adobe Flash Player is installed on my computer as a separate executable. So it is on the Windows 7 Pro Control Panel > Programs and Features list, through which it can be uninstalled (but it is better to run the Adobe Flash Player "uninstall" utility instead). Adobe Flash Player is probably launched by Java Script and/or by HTML 5, when Firefox renders the website page.

AliceWyman
AliceWyman
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To Blacklisted:

When you posted a reply to this thread recently, you were replying to a question that was asked over a year ago. I'm not sure if you need help or were just posting information for others.

This thread was locked because of a new feature just added to the Support Forum, that automatically locks a thread if it was originally created over 180 days in the past.

If you need help with Firefox you should ask a new question on the support forum. You can use this link as a starting point: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/new