Shockwave, the Macromedia standard for interactive multimedia on the web, compresses multimedia files so they can be downloaded and played in web pages by most popular browsers. Dreamweaver supports two types of Shockwave movies: those created by Director and those created by Flash.

The software that plays Shockwave movies is available as both a Netscape plugin or an ActiveX control for Internet Explorer. When you insert either type of Shockwave movie, Dreamweaver uses both the OBJECT tag (defined by Microsoft for ActiveX controls) and the EMBED tag (defined by Netscape) to get the best results in all browsers. When you make changes in the Property inspector for either Shockwave Director or Shockwave Flash, Dreamweaver maps your entries to the appropriate parameters for both the OBJECT and EMBED tags.

To insert a Shockwave movie:

1	Place the cursor where you want to insert a Shockwave movie.
2	Click the Shockwave Director or Shockwave Flash buttons on the Object palette.
3	Enter the name of the source movie file in the dialog box that appears.
4	In the Property inspector, enter the width and height of the movie in the W and H boxes.
	These are the only required properties. See Shockwave properties for more information on the other properties.