Director 6 Demystified [Paperback]

Jason Roberts (Author)

Book Description

Series: Macromedia Press Series | Publication Date: January 15, 1998

Dubbed by multimedia professionals "a career in a box" and updated for Director 6, this book takes you from neophyte to near-professional. The "three-in-one" approach gives you the lowdown on Director, Lingo, and Shockwave. The book and CD-ROM depict seven actual multimedia and Web "project profiles" in open-code format. The CD-ROM also has fonts, graphics, sounds, and more.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Director 6 Demystified is a comprehensive guide to using Director, Lingo, and Shockwave to produce sophisticated animations and movies. The author starts out by explaining the Director interface and then teaches you how to create a simple animation and a screen saver. Next she shows you how to create a simple movie using sound and tempo control parameters; add interactivity in the form of buttons, looping, and nonlinear navigation; and create a projector, which is a stand-alone application. The author also helps you create special visual effects in Director's Paint window; use Photoshop plug-ins with Director; build and use color palettes; and use advanced display, Score, Sprite, and search features.

The next section of Director 6 Demystified covers Lingo. It teaches you the elements of scripting and how to create interactive movies with user feedback and control, cursor commands, behaviors, authoring-level Lingo, multiple movies and casts, lists, parent/child objects, audio files, video files, and Xtras and XObjects. Other topics include how to debug and troubleshoot your movies; manage memory, graphics, and other elements; and prepare your work for CD-ROM and cross-platform mastering. The book also explains how to create a Lingo-driven animation, an artificial intelligence-based interactive game, a floppy-based brochure, a screen saver, a cross-platform CD-ROM, and a video game.

The last section of the book focuses on using Shockwave to prepare your Director movies for the Web. You also learn how to use Streaming Shockwave, Streaming Lingo, Shockwave Audio, and NetLingo, which consists of network-related Lingo commands. Each chapter ends with a Points to Remember section that sums up everything covered.

Appendices list Director resources on the Internet, Lingo elements and codes, keyboard shortcuts, third-party Xtras, and Xtra and XObject internal references. A CD-ROM features clip media, Director movies, Xtras, XObjects, typefaces, and demo versions of many commercial and shareware software programs.

Director 6 Demystified gives you an approach to learning Director, Lingo, and Shockwave that's not only well organized but also highly technical. It is useful for repeated reference as you increase your knowledge of the program.

From Library Journal

Whenever Macromedia puts out an update to Director, its top-of-the-line multimedia authoring software, Roberts updates his book, and he always does an excellent job. Director 6 is significantly different from Director 5, and this book will be useful both for those who are total newbies to multimedia authoring and for advanced users moving from older versions. An excellent book for all new-media designers.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1074 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Pr (January 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201688840
• ISBN-13: 978-0201688849
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.1 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,034,150 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Big mistake to purchase this book. BIG., November 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Director 6 Demystified (Paperback)

I just can't put it in a "maximum of 1,000 words". And I'm not going to spend more time than I already did with this book. All I can say is that, basically, it sucks, that's it. Totally outdated tutorials that will work only if you own an old Mac, lack of detalied information on Lingo. I really expected much more from this book. Just don't buy it, trust me. You can get much more from your money.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars There are BETTER Director books out there, January 8, 2000

By 

E. Padilla "snowpony" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Director 6 Demystified (Paperback)

As a Multimedia Design major, our teacher used this book as our textbook. All I can say is, if you want to learn Director and Lingo (and I mean learn it WELL), use another book. Although there are several step-by-step exercises to help tutor you in learning Director, I found that in some of the exercises they will tell you to do a step, but they do not describe it in DETAIL. The exercises are vague, and with the examples given, it does not tell you how or why they did that step. I've discussed this book with my fellow students and found that the majority of them agreed with me. I know they came out with a Director 7 Demystified book (by the same author), and although I have not seen it, if it is written the way this book (D6D), then you are just wasting your money.

I just bought USING DIRECTOR 7 (which was recommended to me by my new professor) as well as the DIRECTOR 7 BIBLE. I LOVE both of these books! USING DIRECTOR 7 is much more descriptive and easy to understand, and the DIRECTOR 7 BIBLE is great for quick and easy referencing. If you are going to learn Director, I suggest you buy both of these books. :oD

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointed, September 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Director 6 Demystified (Paperback)

I was looking for a D6 book that would take me to a next level on advanced lingo programming and other topics in D6 that I haven't discovered. I consider I'm an intermediate D6 user. I know how to put together a relatively creative CD-ROM project. I admit there's a time that I have to sacrifice some of my creativity due to lack of lingo skills. So I bought this book. I was NOT going to use it as a tutorial, but a desktop quick reference for problem solving tutor. However, the book did not deliver as it promised. It lacks so much information on how to do things. It keeps telling that you can do this and that, but doesn't explain how the object-oriented programming is carried out in those examples in the book. It jumps from one example to the other regardless what questions and thoughts users might have. It assumes the readers can always follow the author. I was very disappointed. Don't buy this book, and go look for other books like Lingo in a nutshell. I haven't read the Director Demystified 7 (the newest version), but I wouldn't want to waste my money on it.