I must be an idiot

I have an Ibook G3, and I'm trying to put the macromedia shckwave player on it. I go to the website, download it ot my desktop, and then I doubleclick it, and the installer comes up, along with the whit icon that you have to "eject".
Bear with me, I don't use this mac very often. I'm a PC guy, and I've only had the mac for about a month. I don't know the workings of it yet.
Now, I click the installer, and it does its thing, and tells me that the program is installed. I'm not able to open the .swf file I have on my desktop, though. I go to file, then open with, and I can't find the shockwave player anywhere in there. can someone tell me the secrets to getting a program to install on a mac?
Any help is appreciated!
Thanks
D

It's probably installed successfully. You'll just need the .swf file to open with a particular program. Just control-click and go to Get Info or highlight the file and press Command + I. Then go to "Open with:" select the browser you want the file to open in, and press "Change All..." to associate all .swf files with that app.

Note: You can also play flash files in Quicktime!

nope, didn't work, and quicktime won't open the flash file.
When I choose to change the program that opens the file, I can't find the flash player, its NOT on my HD, even though that the program said it installed.

Just tell a browser to play the file, then.

I can't get any program to open the .swf file, if someone knows how to get quicktime to open it, please tell me. I can't open it with a browser, either, whatever that means. When I choose a program to open the file with, there are NO programs to open it with, aside from quicktime. How can I open this file?
If someone knows, please, tell me, step by step instructions are nice
Its a good thing I didn't pay for this mac, or I'd throw it out the window. I don't understand why its so difficult to install programs on the mac.

Difficult? Wow! IMO it couldn't be easier :mac:

It's not the mac, it's your understanding of flash. Open up Safari or any web browser, and drag your file to that browser window that opens up.. shazaam it plays! Unless of course you have a bad flash file.

Yeah, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer (don't use this, although it would work) will all work if you use them with the file.

1. Flash is a browser plugin, not an application. It can't open a file by itself.

2. Web browsers know how to open HTML files, not .swf files.

In order to get it to work, you have to force the browser to open the .swf. The web browser will then use the plugin to display the file

1. they actauly do have an actaul player.. It comes with flash mx

Yep, but he doesnt have flash MX from the sound of it But I did a bit of research and you can actually download it separately, which was pretty exciting to find out! If yu go here Dave you can download the standalone application that should be able to play it for you and you will not have to use a web browser.

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/updates/mx2004/player7/saflashplayer_all.hqx