(Adobe) Shockwave Flash is the Flashplayer plugin. You have version 11.1 r102 installed which is the latest version. Adobe is reponsible for the name, not Mozilla.

Do not confuse Flashplayer with "Adobe/Macromedia Shockwave player" as it is an older, but still used, product. Adobe is responsible for the confusing names, not Mozilla. Shockwave player (which it appears you do not have installed), would show under your Plugins as "Shockwave for Director". There are links to information about the two products here --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Adobe_Flash_software

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There are separate download pages on the Adobe website for Adobe Flash Player and for Adobe Shockwave Player, respectively. There is one button for each on the main Adobe downloads page (http://www.adobe.com/downloads/)

If you download and install the Adobe Flash Player, then it will be reported by the Firefox 13.0.1 Tools > Add-ons > Plugins feature as Shockwave Flash (although actually there is no such plug-in available from Adobe by that name).

If you download and install the Adobe Shockwave Player, then it will be reported by the Firefox 13.0.1 Tools > Add-ons > Plugins feature as Shockwave for Director (although there is no such plug-in available from Adobe by that name).

The Adobe Flash Player and the Adobe Shockwave Player are shown respectively by those names on the Windows 7 Control Panel > Programs and Features list. They can be uninstalled by using this feature of Windows 7. You can disable them in Firefox but not uninstall them with Firefox.

EDITED: This is a simpler and more accurate explanation of what happens when I download and and install those two Adobe plugins than the first description which I attempted.

Hi Blacklisted, the Flash plugin appears as "Shockwave Flash" under the Plugins category. This name lingers for historical reasons; yes, it's a bit confusing with the Shockwave for Director plugin.

The first statement in SafeBrower's "solution" is misleading because he fails to distinguish Adobe Flash Player from Adobe Shockwave Flash. They are not the same. Please read the reply that I have posted if you want the facts.

Hi Blacklisted, are you saying that the Shockwave Flash plugin in Firefox is not the Flash player? You can verify that it is by opening a page that uses the Flash player (such as the About Adobe Flash Player page) and confirming that it works. Then disable the plugin and reload your test page to see what you get.

It is true that Adobe supplies its own software to manage updating of both the Flash plugin and the Flash ActiveX control. However, as far as how one can identify the plugin in Firefox, it really is called Shockwave Flash.

Sorry, jscher2000, ....

[remarks withdrawn, i.e., deleted]

Quote: "Hi Blacklisted, are you saying that the Shockwave Flash plugin in Firefox is not the Flash player? ...."

[ remarks withdrawn, i.e., deleted ]

Can you attach a screenshot of your Tools > Add-ons > Plugins window?

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem

Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot.

See also:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Issues_related_to_plugins#Identifying_installed_plugins

You can see the installed plugins that are enabled on the about:plugins page.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about%3Aplugins

You can set the plugin.expose_full_path pref to true on the about:config page to see the full path of plugins on the about:plugins page.
It is best not to leave that pref set to true as it exposes that full path to web servers, so reset that pref to false after you are done with the about:plugins page.

@cor-el : Trust me, the Adobe Shockwave Flash plug-in is installed in Firefox 13.0.1 which I am running. That is not an issue.

EDITED: Actually, as I have stated in my revised original post, after I install the Adobe Flash Player (as Adobe calls it today), Firefox 13.0.1 shows Shockwave Flash as a plugin. Whatever the historical reasons for that, it really should be changed to correspond to the name that Adobe uses now.

Do not confuse Shockwave Flash and Shockwave for Director. Those are different. Adobe Flash and Shockwave Flash are the same. Flash and the Director were originally developed and maintained by Macromedia and that company named them both Shockwave.

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Managing+the+Flash+plugin
• http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Using+the+Shockwave+plugin+with+Firefox
• http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/

Hi Blacklisted, I believe you are incorrect.

In Firefox, Flash media is played using the "Shockwave Flash" plugin. No other Adobe software is needed or used; this is the Flash Player for purposes of Firefox pages. Adobe calls it a plugin, and when plugin detection is done in Firefox (e.g., on the Plugin Check page) the plugin is listed. There really is no evidence that it is not a plugin.

If you search your PC for the Flash player executables, you will find two 9MB files in this folder:

C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash

One is the ActiveX control for IE (OCX), and the other is the Flash plugin for other browsers (DLL). There also are a couple of uninstallers there. If you look around your PC, I don't think you will find a stand-alone Flash player, unless you have Flash development environment.

As the three screenshots that I'm attaching show, the Adobe Flash Player and the Adobe Shockwave Player are not the same software. Also, at least at the present time, there is no such Adobe plugin as "Shockwave Flash" (player or otherwise).

Unfortunately, as the screenshot of the Firefox 13.0.1 Tools > Add-ons > Plugins tab shows, the Firefox developers conflate the names of the two to become "Shockwave Flash" followed by the version number of the installed Adobe Flash Player. There may be historical reasons for the name in Firefox, but it should be corrected to the current one that Adobe uses.

[ additional remarks deleted ]

@jscher2000: Yes, and on my 64-bit Windows 7 Pro computer system C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Adobe also exists. It has two sub-folders respectively named "Director" and "Shockwave 11". Firefox 13.01. doesn't show Shockwave for Director as a plug-in nor does it apparently have the Adobe Shockwave Player installed. As far as I can see, there is no way to have either one of them used by Firefox.

Also, there does not appear to be any such Adobe plug-in named "Shockwave Flash". The Adobe website names them respectively, The Adobe Flash Player and the Adobe Shockwave Player. Please see my post with the three screenshots attached.

Blacklisted:

Confusion over Flash (aka Shockwave Flash) and Shockwave Player (aka Director) is not new and is caused by Adobe's naming convention for the 2 distinct products. Here is a brief explanation of the differences in Shockwave Player (aka Director) and Shockwave Flash (aka Flash, Adobe Flash, FlashPlayer, etc.) --> http://www.askdavetaylor.com/the_difference_between_flash_and_shockwave.html

To verify what I said and everyone else who has responded in thread supports. If you are unwilling to do the following, then you will be forever confused. As for Windows 7, the directory/folder structure is different, I do not/will never use Windows 7 or beyond and am not familiar with the file structure, except that items in "WOW64" paths are generally 64-bit and items in "(x86)" paths are generally 32-bit.

• make a list of the related Adobe/Macromedia items on your system and their locations; also list all browser plugins for all browsers before you begin. You can also see your enabled plugins for Firefox (and some other browsers) here --> https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/
• go to the Adobe pages for verifying your installation(s)
  • Flash (plays youtube.com and similar videos and some games) --> https://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
  • Shockwave (few videos in this format but some games; will not play youtube.com and similar videos) --> https://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/
• uninstall one item at a time from your system
• followed by checking against your lists in the previous step
• see what works and what does not work on all browsers and make note of what is not working
  • go to youtube.com and try to play any video (Flash, aka Shockwave Flash)
  • here is a Shockwave (aka Director) game (jigsaw puzzle) you can try --> http://www.uclick.com/client/hci/uj/
• once your are satisfied which is not working, make notes, re-install the item you removed from your system and start with the first step again.
• the whole process should not take long if you have the installers saved to your hard drive and you keep track of what you are installing/uninstalling.

With Flash (FlashPlayer), on a 64-bit OS with both 32-bit and 64-bit browsers (Firefox through currently released versions are all 32-bit; there are instructions in the Shockwave Player link below to determine if you have 32-bit or 64-bit or both versions of IE installed), you must have both bit versions available/installed. Internet Explorer user an ActiveX version, other browers use a Plugin version. If you have IE and other browsers installed on your system, you must install/update both the ActiveX and the Plugin and you may need to have available/install up to 4 plugins from Adobe on a mixed 32-bit/64-bit system..

Shockwave Player is available only in 32-bit only --> http://helpx.adobe.com/shockwave/kb/shockwave-player-64-bit-windows.html

Good luck. I hope you can satisfy yourself that your assumptions are not correct and that what I and everyone else is saying is this thread is correct. I hope that your can find a way to accept your incorrect assumptions and live in peace with that knowledge.

I will have no more to say to you on this topic.

Hi Blacklisted, the names of plugins are set by the plugins themselves. Have you ever noticed that the usual file extension for Flash media is .swf ?

@jscher2000: Yes, I've noticed that. Also, I've been running Firefox since version 1, and the Netscape Browser previous to that. Macromedia originally developed and named these two plugins, and Adobe bought Macromedia. For a while they were Shockwave Flash and Shockwave for Director, respectively. I suppose that the "internal" names of the software as identified in some way by Firefox remain the original ones and Adobe has never changed them internally.

Adobe continued to develop the features and function of Shockwave Flash and re-branded it Adobe Flash Player. It has become universally identified as such by users, regardless of how Firefox identifies it. The HTML 5 standard has a "video player" included and some folks regard Adobe Flash Player as obsolete. But it seems to me that the vast majority of websites are still coded with previous versions of HTML, and Adobe Flash Player is still used to render their pages (at least when it is available to the browser), whether it is always necessary to use it.

As to Shockwave for Director, Adobe has re-branded it to Adobe Shockwave Player. It has rarely been used by any websites that I can recall, except for a game website that used it for about half of the games which they offered. I haven't visited that malware-ridden website for over two years now.

What is in a name? I guess that this long thread answers that question. :-)

To summarize:

"Adobe Flash Player" plugin for Firefox displays as "Shockwave Flash" in the Firefox plugins list

"Adobe Shockwave Player" plugin for Firefox displays as "Shockwave for Director" in the Firefox plugins list

You would break web pages that check for installed plugins (navigator.plugins) if you would change the name.

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.navigator