ShockwaveMany website designers now take advantage of Shockwave and Flash to add multimedia effects, such as animation with sound, to their websites. Both Shockwave and Flash are Macromedia technologies that let web designers add multimedia elements to web pages. Shockwave movies are the resulting files exported from Macromedia Director, that display animation, special effects, and other types of applications for the web. Flash movies are animations, and other types of interactive web elements exported from Macromedia Flash.
Web designers add Shockwave and Flash files to web pages for several reasons, including to make web pages more interesting and interactive, to add colourful navigational components, to enhance a site visually with animation, multimedia, and special effects, and to add more complex components such as online games.
Most Shockwave and Flash movies require a special plug in that is easy to obtain, since many browsers and operating systems include the plug in. You can also export Flash and Shockwave movies such as Java, which does not need a plug in to view.