wat's the difference between an exe and a swf file?

Question

i was recently searching the net for a particular download. when i found it, there were two options. download swf or exe. so, i wanna know what's the diff and advantages of one over the other

Answer 1

The SWF will require you to have a program called Shockware installed in order to run it. The EXE version is either a native Windows program or, most likely, it includes a "runtime" version of Shockwave built into it.

The advantage of the SWF version is that it's probably a smaller file and will run on a computer with Windows or a Mac that has Shockwave installed.

The EXE, on the other hand, is probably bigger, only runs on Windows, but doesn't require Shockwave.