Shockwave

Shockwave is a proprietary technology that enables web pages to deliver multimedia objects. Macromedia developed Shockwave as a Web-sized way to view the products of its popular authoring tool, Director. Once the object is made in Director and compressed using Macromedia's AfterBurner, that object can be embedded in an HTML file. To see a Shockwave object, your web browser must have the Shockwave helper application, an extra doodad that can be freely downloaded as either a Netscape Navigator plug-in or an ActiveX control. The problem with Shockwave, however, is the problem that plagues all plug-ins:A web experience is greatly degraded when you're told that you can't see or hear something because you need another component for your browser. But as plug-ins go, Shockwave is excellent. Recent versions support not only video, animation, and audio, but can also process user events like clicks and keystrokes.