We already know that Adobe will retire the aging Flash Player, but sit seems that another legacy solution will be shelved soon. Adobe Shockwave would be shut down soon.
After receiving several complaints from angry customers, the company has decided to discontinue its famous Shockwave player on April 9th of this year. The Director authoring tool and the Mac version of the player were retired in 2017, but the announcement marks the sunset of the plugin. Enterprise customers will receive extended support until 2022 when the contracts expire.
Some may wonder by Adobe has decided to abandon what seems to be a popular plugin, but the answer is quite simple. As the internet has improved over the years, Shockwave and Flash were replaced by alternatives like HTML5 and WebGL. It is clear that the developers prefer newer solutions since they work across several platforms.
Adobe Shockwave Will Be Discontinued
Those that wish to maintain their web app should be able to switch to modern standards without issues. The main advantage of using HTML5 comes from the fact that the format is not proprietary. The solution also works without the need to use additional plugins, and it offers a variety of features.
While the removal of Adobe Shockwave support shouldn’t affect modern sites, it is likely that those who still enjoy legacy web games and media websites will be a bit sad. Most of the pages have been abandoned for years, but the after Shockwave is phased out the media features will be rendered unusable.
The original version of the Adobe Shockwave player was released in 1995 by Macromind. The player became quite popular, and Adobe acquired the company and all of its assets in 2005. Shockwave has offered support for 3D graphics, audio, vector graphics and a particular scripting language called Lingo. The software was used to develop several video games which were famous in the 1990s among which we can mention titles like The Journeyman Project and Total Distortion.
Dorothy has been a journalist for ten years and has been working with the Tech News Watch staff since the beginning of the news site. Her main contribution to Tech News Watch are mobile, IT and science news, with a focus on software updates and great outer space discoveries.