Shockwave
By means of the free file format Shockwave from Adobe (until 2006 Macromedia) interactive contents, which were created by means of the Adobe Director, can be played over a web browser. Due to the import possibilities of 3D objects as well as its rendering capabilities (representation/computation of graphical content on monitors/displays), the use of Shockwave is particularly suitable for complex applications as well as the representation of games. This can be attributed to the development of Shockwave, as this file format was originally designed for interactive multimedia products as well as e-commerce applications. However, due to the low usage rate of Shockwave (approx. 63 percent), this file format is rarely used in the area of advertising banners or even entire websites.
Advantages of Shockwave
The advantage of Shockwave is the high and by the author partly influenceable compression of the contents. This is particularly helpful to make extensive contents with short loading time available over the Internet. For example, Shockwave can be used to encode sounds in MP3 format or the MP3 variant Shockwave Audio (SWA) and to compress images as JPEGs. Another advantage of Shockwave is the so-called streaming (refers to audio and video files received from a computer network and played back simultaneously). Furthermore, Shockwave is available as a free file format. However, Shockwave is not available as a plug-in for the Linux operating system.
The history of Adobe (formerly Macromedia)
The company name “Adobe” (Spanish and English: “clay brick”) is a US software company. The inventors of the page description language “PostScript” (describes the exact structure of a web page), John Warnock and Charles Geschke founded the company in 1982. Since its founding, Adobe’s development and production has focused particularly on programs that affect the prepress (summary of all processes before printing, such as scanning, data preparation, retouching, image editing). Furthermore, the company Adobe strives for a standardization of its programs “PostScript” as well as “’PDF”. If approved by the ISO (“International Organization for Standardization”), both software programs will become industry standards.
