Adobe to Discontinue Shockwave on April 9th

[Wowfunhappy]

They really shouldn't make Flash completely unavailable to download. They're cutting off a lot of legacy content with cultural significance.

Yes, using unmaintained software is bad for security. However, the alternative of forcing people to use third party sources—which will all be somewhat shady, since Flash is technically under copyright—is even worse for security! Now, you might be downloading a fake, malicious copy of Adobe Flash! God knows there are enough of those already in circulation...

Put it up on a public company archive server somewhere. I really like what Panic does, all software vendors should have something similar: https://download.panic.com

[TheOperator]

It really doesn't matter insofar that the internet is going to keep copies of shockwave installers for decades long after adobe would ever realistically keep offering downloads.

I do think it would be cool for them to keep offering downloads of the installer. Adobe should be proud of shockwave and show that pride by keeping the installer out there.

[vorpalhex]

I wonder if Adobe will lay off enforcement and allow archives to host flash player builds. I know there's an electron build that's precompiled with the Flash NPAPI so allow legacy flash apps to still be distributed.

[timw4mail]

Shockwave !== Flash.

Confusing, yes, as Flash was sometimes labeled as Shockwave Flash.

[egypturnash]

Holy crap, they were still updating Director as late as ~2016? I don't think I've heard anyone talk about using it since like 2000. Feels super weird to see "Adobe Director".

I always just figured they dropped it like they did Freehand after they bought Macromedia for Flash.

[godzillabrennus]

Still hurts that they killed Fireworks. Best photo editor ever for quick web ready edits.

[mortenjorck]

> Released in 1995 by Macromind, Shockwave brought interactive content and games to the web in a way that was never seen before. In 2005, Adobe purchased Macromind and all of their interactive web products such as Flash and Shockwave continued under the Adobe name.

Not Macromedia – “MacroMind"?!

I had never even heard the name MacroMind until I looked it up just now, to learn it existed until its 1992 merger with Authorware, when it became the vastly better-known Macromedia. How on earth did the writer of this article accidentally use the name of Macromedia's obscure predecessor?

[tomysshadow]

Probably because Director was originally created under a different name, VideoWorks, which WAS released by MacroMind before they eventually became Macromedia.

[godzillabrennus]

I’m surprised they didn’t just state “Macromind, co-founded in part by Marc Canter”.

[jonplackett]

Can't believe they're still updating it.

I do still miss the ease of use fo flash though.

Wish someone would make something this simple outputting web standards.

Flash let a whole bunch of creative people make interactive experiments and websites that they just don't have the technical skills to do now you need to use a more formal setup.

Flash sucked for many reasons, but for this it was excellent and hasn't been replaced.

[Wowfunhappy]

Adobe Animate is basically a rebranded version of Flash, and it can export html5. I don't know how complete/compatible the export option is, but I know we've used it at my company for a small project.

[basch]

Flash and Shockwave are two different things. Flash is still around as Animate.

[nosamu]

Note that this announcement is about Shockwave, not Flash. Here is an article about the difference between the two: https://medium.com/@nosamu/the-difference-between-flash-and-... While Shockwave Player will be discontinued on April 9, Flash Player will be discontinued at the end of 2020: https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/

[ydnaclementine]

I think I remember playing games and watching videos ~2001 on shockwave.com. Shockwave powered a lot of web games for a long time

[tobr]

I have very fond, if somewhat hazy, memories of shockwave.com too. For some reason, I have much warmer feelings for the Shockwave brand than Flash, which I mostly think of as a resource hogging nuisance.

[Animats]

I liked Shockwave for the year or two it had the Havok physics engine. But Macromedia didn't keep up the payments and had to take it out.

[Theodores]

A decade ago people were able to put together very impressive things in Flash. I was never wanting to take that route however that content still deserves to be viewable by future generations. Sure the Flash viewer might open your computer to hackers but if I wanted to see what my music mad workmate was trying to impress me with a decade ago then it would be nice to be able to risk my computer viewing it.

With browsers now 'evergreen' and auto-updating I am not sure about this complete disconnect with allegedly bad web pages of the past. Having to dig out a ten year old PC running 'Vista' to view a Flash based website of yesteryear is far from accessible. I wonder how people in the archive business view this. HTML is essentially backwards compatible although I think the blink tag has finally gone from Firefox. Flash deserves a legacy final edition that grownups can use to show stuff to their grandchildren in decades to come.

[Wowfunhappy]

Adobe has a standalone program called Flash Projector that can load swf files. That's what I'd generally recommend for viewing Flash content, though you do need to isolate and save any swf files beforehand.

[tomysshadow]

Note that Shockwave installers will also stop working after that point, as even the "full" installer downloads components from the web during the install.

[DEADBEEFC0FFEE]

I wonder if Unity and Electron will be the Shockwave of tomorrow.