A Flash player is automatically included with any download of the Shockwave player. Pizer says that in terms of capability, Flash is to Director what television is to cable. Flash has the core of what you want and what you need, but the spectrum of offerings between the two is vast. Director is a much more robust technology, but Flash is more prevalent on the Web. The advantage to using Director is that it has a more robust programming language, the ability to add video and a whole suite of third- party plug ins that allow you to add 3D interactivity.
Director is a much more complex environment and requires a commitment to learn.
Flash is Macromedia's most widely used and significant drawing and animation tool to date. Another piece of the Flash world is called Generator, which is a server technology that allows integration with a database in order to serve up customized Web site content based on individual user needs. Just when you thought you had it all figured out, along comes another technology to shake things up. This time, it's LiveMotion from Adobe, a streaming application development tool used to create Web graphics and interactive animation. LiveMotion is a competing authoring environment for the Flash standard.