Shockwave

Shockwave is the name for interactive multimedia content created with Macromedia's Director program and delivered over the Web.

Web designers believe that people browsing the Web are drawn to rich content combining audio, video, graphics, animation, and text. One of the most popular formats for online interactive multimedia is Macromedia's Shockwave. A key reason for Shockwave's popularity is its ability to package interactive audio and video in a very small data file. Early multimedia files were very large; even though people were attracted to the idea of online audio and video, they were often frustrated by the amount of time that it took for the content to download. With the help of several compression strategies, Shockwave reduces download time to seconds instead of minutes. And since Shockwave files can be streamed, people can start using them before they've finished downloading the entire file.

Shockwave content begins its journey to a computer screen in Macromedia's Director, a powerful and popular authoring program that is used to create interactive multimedia projects. Director arrived on the scene in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and quickly became the authoring program of choice for most multimedia developers. Originally, Director was [Page 408]used to create guided tours, product demonstrations, and presentations, and the content was burned onto CD-ROMs. Even today, the majority of interactive CD-ROMs are created in Director. But in 1995, Macromedia added Shockwave to Director, which meant that Director files could be sent over the Web and viewed with a Shockwave Player. The Shockwave Player displays the content inside a Web browser window.

Like many other software companies producing plug-ins for the Internet, Macromedia decided to make the Shockwave Player available for free, while continuing to charge for Director, the program that creates the content. This tactic ensured that there would be a large audience for Shockwave content. By 2001, over 165 million Web users had Shockwave Player installed on their computers; it was preinstalled on all new Macintosh OS and Windows 98/2000 computers, was included on every America Online CD-ROM, and was automatically installed by both Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Communicator.

The range of content that can be created with Shockwave is surprising. Online retailers use it for product demonstrations, such as allowing people to virtually try on clothes. It is used to deliver educational simulations in distance-education classes. Independent producers create films in Director that are made available to the general public. With the help of the music company Beatnik, Macromedia created an application called MixMaker that makes it possible for fans to re-mix the vocal, guitar, percussion, and other tracks of a song with the click of a mouse. And users can play a wide variety of games using Shockwave.

Due to its fast downloading speed, widespread adoption and availability, and range of use, Shockwave has become the de facto standard for online interactive multimedia content.