As the latest entry in the competition for the Internet's killer app, Macromedia^® gives us Shockwave, yet another inline plugin for Netscape 2.0^®. Is it cool? Is it better than Java^TM? What exactly is it?

What is it?
Where's it at?
How do I make my own stuff?
Gateway 2000's sHockEd pages ... a glimpse of tomorrow.

What is Shockwave?

Director^® is Macromedia's flagship product - if you've ever seen or used a CD-ROM, chances are Director was used at some stage in its manufacture. It is very easy to use and essentially allows people to design their own interactive applications.

Shockwave, on the other hand,is the name for a Netscape 2.0 plug-in that allows the browser to inline Director files in the same way we now see images online.

This increases the functionality of Web pages a thousandfold - now all the commonly associated whistles and bells of CD-ROMs are available for online manipulation and play. So we get improved user interfaces, animations, sounds, and interactivity of a kind the Web has never seen, since these files are seamlessly integrated into any ordinary Web page.

Where is Shockwave?

Gimme gimme gimmeeeee....chill out dude!

(It's only available for Windows 95 and Windows 3.x ... "Mc"People will have to satisfy themselves with a "Mc"Browser -- for now).

You only need to download one file and it's very easy to install.

How do I make my own stuff?

This is where another product comes into play. It's made by Macromedia once again (no surprises there) and it's called Afterburner^TM. Its primary function is to compress Director movies into a manageable (and easily downloadable) size and prepare them for the Web.


So, whereas the development steps before were

Director + (Photoshop^® , etc.) = CD-ROM

the steps now are

Director + (Photoshop, etc.) + Afterburner = Netscape

Since Netscape 2.0 and Afterburner are free to download, the only thing you pay for is Director (if you wanna make your own ShOcKeD stuff).

Director and Afterburner are available for both Macs and Windows PCs, but remember, the Shockwave plug-in only works with Windows 3.x and 95. In other words, you can happily develop Shockwave stuff on both Macs and PCs, but you'll need a Windows machine to view your masterpiece (for now, anyway).

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