Identifying
the two Shockwave Plugins
Being
two plugins, identifying Flash and Director can be a confusing
task. Basically there are two players:
- Shockwave
Director Player, plays Director files.
- Shockwave
Flash Player, plays Flash files.
Adding
to the confusion, Shockwave Director has had several link-buttons
with differing names.

Commonly,
"Shockwave" refers to Director. Still, the above
button has also been used for Flash.

Looking much like the Director button, the above Shockwave
Flash button was more confusing than helpful.

Today,
is added the "Get Flash" button. With the
new Flash logo, you finally know what you are downloading.
Tip:
An
easy way to identify whether you are looking at Flash or Director
content on the web is to rightclick (on a Mac you control/click)
the content with the mouse button:

The
above menu appears if you are looking at Flash content. If
you are looking at Director content, no menu appears
upon rightclick.
So
the bottomline is, Shockwave refers to content
created in Director , whilst Flash refers to content
created in Flash .
That's
all well and good for browser users to know, but what a developer
wants to know is: "Which should I use to create my site with,
Director or Flash?"