Customer Reviews

Director 7 Demystified: The Official Guide to Macromedia Director, Lingo, and Shockwave with CDROM

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After slogging through D7 and Lingo Authorized--which is a boring read that condescends to anyone looking to take the big plunge--I found Dymystified to be a godsend. D7D has great tutorials (and doesn't take pages to explain how to copy a cast member, for example) but the best thing about this book is that it enables you to develop a process and good work habits. Learning software is one thing, learning productivity is paramount. It's an incredibly engaging read as well with none of the cynicism of the Nutshell books while acknowledging the idiosyncracies of the programme. A must have. This is your first stop if you know nothing about D7 and want to dig deep. Can't recommend it enough.

GOOD JOB GUYS! I first started my relationship with Director by downloading the trial version. I played around alittle with the program, before long I realized that I needed to get some kind of training if I intended to use this software. Although I have not finished this book yet, in a very short time I was able to make sharp looking designs and presentations. I learned how and why, or when and when not to for that matter, to import movies and custom graphics along with how to design using the tools from within Director . This book has worked wonders for me! I highly recomend it to any beginers. What would have taken me months to learn on my own, I learned in minutes with this book.

After reading the Authorized D7 book (also by Gross), I knew I had a lot of fun but did not feel at ease with lingo. Besides, the Nutshell editions looked still somehow arcane to someone who did not know any programming but some JavaScript rollovers. So I dived into the Demystified trip, which has almost concluded (btw, it's pretty fun to read). My advise is: if you are new to director, or if you happen to be afraid of lingo, this might just be the best place to start. The trip is long, but Gross does his best to keep comprehensive. Next step? I guess getting into the OOP stuff. (although this book deals with basic OOP). Enough, anyway, to step into the O'Reilly Jungle. Or at least to do with Director twice the things you can do to Lara Croft. One more thing: Forget about the Authorized edition: This one's a much better teacher.

I first bought Director 7 and Lingo Authorized with no background in Director. I only know Flash. I find it useful since the approach is a step by step tutorial. However after I finished all the exercises, I still have lots of unanswered questions. For example, how to use the Shockwave Multiusers server, and how to make more complex design with lingo, etc. I then read the official manuals, documentations and Director 7 Demystified. They do answer some of my questions. I find Director 7 Demystified can give me a more solid foundation of Director. It explains "why", not just tell you do this and do that. It also covers how to use the simple drawing function in the application. At the end of the book, there is a bigger section on lingo script.

I think Director 7 and Lingo Authorized is good for beginners who likes step by step tutorials. However for those who want to go deeper into it as well as lingo, you ought to read Director 7 Demystified too. Btw, Macromedia is famous for its support and learning site. The official documentation is also a very good source to learn, esp. their manual on the shockwave multiusers server. I cannot find much information about this server in most Director books.

Director 7 Demystified is the best book so far on Director 7. The lingo "encyclopedia" in itself makes the book worthwhile - it's a better reference for lingo than most available. The book generally clarified a lot of topics for me that remained murky after reading several other books. The programming is much more concise and elegant than that in some of the other references. There are topics and details dealt with here that I simply have not seen in other books. If you are serious about multimedia, get this book!

"Director 6 Demystified" was, bar none, the best book for learning and using Director 6.X. "Director 7 Demystified" expands on this great book with a complete Shockwave guide and an expanded Lingo lexicon to handle the massive changes made in D7. This book is great for beginners, holding your hand through every step of the creation process. Even more impressive, though, is how great this book is even if you're proficient with Director. I'm constantly refering to the lingo section (especialy those commands comprising NetLingo). Not only is this the best guide to Director, it is also one of the cheapest! (When's the last time you got a ~1200 page guide to any program for less than $40?) My only concern with this book is that the paperback binding really seems to be at its limits to encompass this huge tome; careless handling could result in rapid deterioration, making me wish for a hardcover version.

I've required this book in a course on Director for a few semesters. It's perfect for getting what you want from the program because its tutorials are transient and mostly self-contained. The excellent Lingo dictionary contains code examples for every part of the language.

The book is _really_ bulky, and as I need less from the introductory chapters, it seems all the more bricklike. Most times I find myself reaching for the comparatively lean Lingo in a Nutshell.

The true measure of a book is its index, and D7D's is good. Because it contains zillions of entries (including all of Lingo), it takes a few tries to pinpoint information. Programmers will miss O'Reilly's indexes, which are nearly always easier to use.

Students have mixed reports on the general usefulness of D7D; some prefer Persidsky's Visual QuickStart Guide for a fast introduction. That book is non-linear enough to replace D7D as a versatile learning tool, but like other VQS Guides, it's soon gathering dust.

This is the book if you only have one, particularly if you're neither Luddite nor code wonk. It will surely outlive its version of Director.

I have both this book and the Director 7 and Lingo Bible. Thelatter is definitely a much better book. It is not as large in size asDemystified is but it has more real-world examples and the author's style of writing is clearer and easier to follow.

I bought Demystified first and was frustrated with the "academic" nature of it's examples. It's as if it was written by a tenured professor. The Director 7 and Lingo Bible, on the other hand, feels and reads like it was written by an industry insider with many multimedia projects under his belt.

I'm not going to go in to too much detail on this in here as I just got through writing a review for the Bible and you can read that if you're interested in finding out why I prefer that book to Demystified.

I bought this book knowing nothing about Director, but having to learn the program for a class. In the class that I took, we had to purchase Director 7 Authorized, and work the tutorials. I went through both books, and let me tell you - This book is so much better than Authorized!

Demystified starts at the very beginning, explaining the interface of Director and menus. Then, it moves into using Director, and explains everything in detail. Once you become familiar with Director, Demystified tackles Lingo, and the cool things you can do with it. Lingo is not that hard to program in, and once I went through Demystified, I could easily program everything I did in Lingo.

As I work through Director projects, I am constantly referencing this book for terminology, functions, and other information. It more than pays for itself as a reference volume, as well as teaching you Director and Lingo.

If you want to learn Director and Lingo, this is definitely the book to get.

whether you are still confused where that particular sub-menu/pop-up palette/toolbar resides( and director has a zillion of 'em)or you need to figure out how to construct a complex sequence of actions, this book is clear, clean, and often, wryly amusing. I haven't had to open the cd-rom yet,as the text/illustrations are so step-by-step concise that even a raw beginner like me can create the tutorial exercises from scratch, without using the accompanying files. just flipping through the incredibly well-organized appenixes has taught me more about lingo that I would have imagined in such a short time, from fully using all the amazing cut & paste features in Director7, to constructing my own code. this book is well worth the backache of lugging around it's enclyclopedic size, even on the NYC subways!