Product Description

Macromedia Director MX is the latest version of its flagship multimedia authoring environment. Used for building rich, interactive content and applications deployed on CD/DVD-ROM, kiosks, and the Web via Macromedia Shockwave Player, the software will release in December for $1,199 ($399 for users upgrading from versions 8.0 or 8.5). More than 335 million Web users have already installed Macromedia Shockwave Player, which will continue to support and play Macromedia Director MX projects. New Macromedia Director MX product features include: seamless integration with the Macromedia Flash MX product family, the streamlined Macromedia MX user interface, Mac OS X support, and major new workflow efficiencies. For more information, go to www.macromedia.com/go/director/. Based on the curriculum developed and tested for use by Macromedia's authorized trainers, Macromedia Director MX and Lingo: Training from the Source provides a series of project-based, hands-on tutorials designed to introduce readers at their own pace to all the key concepts and features of this latest release. Topics include: animation, sound, video (including allowing the user to play video using interactive controls), Lingo programming, debugging movies, creating projectors for delivering content on CDs, creating Shockwave content for the Internet, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #721914 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 920 pages

About the Author

Phil Gross is the founder of Mel Co., a San Francisco Bay Area consulting firm that offers programming and instructional design support. He has written books and training materials on such topics as UNIX, assembly language, and OS/2, and he wrote the Macromedia Press/Peachpit Press best-seller Director and Lingo Authorized for version 7 and 8 of Director.

Customer Reviews

Excellent tutorial!!!
Awhile ago I picked up a couple of books on Director 8 to learn the same, but found the books written for someone who has a great deal of devotion and time to learn the program. At the time I had more pressing matters and postponed learning Director. Now, over a year later, I decided to take another run at Director MX. The options for learning material is limited at the time of this writing so the tomb was purchased and after loading the 30-day Director MX trial program from the enclosed CD-ROM, I turned to page one.

Over the past two years I've taught myself numerous software programs (i.e. After Effects, Premiere, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, Commotion, Edition) and have found that `tutorial' books fall into three categories. The three categories are: One, the author doesn't know the subject well enough to teach it. Two, the author knows the material, but only a digit head can absorb the material the way it is presented. Three, the author understands the material and knows how to `chunk' it into bite size morsels that are easy to comprehend and recall for the average user.

Phil Gross is definitely someone who understands the material and more importantly is able to structure the presentation so that one lesson builds on another, which leads to a level of proficiency that the learner has the skill and self confidence to develop projects on their own.

Plenty of information but could be better organised
There is a lot of information on Director here, but rather less on Lingo than the title suggests. The CD accompanying the book has several 'bonus' chapters, a feature which I thoroughly dislike. Files for the various projects are also on the CD - a feature I do like rather than looking up a website.

The book is packed with Director tips and techniques and is as good as is available for Director. However, despite all this information, no coherent design philosophy is put forward in the book to help developers. This is a definite shortcoming. Set against that, the projects are interesting in the main, so you can extrapolate. The section on video control in Lingo is very interesting but too short to get into more meaty topics. Bizarrely the chapter on Director and the web is on the CD. The chapter on databases and lists is useful, but limited, and will appeal to programmers in particular. There is a chapter on animation using an 'arm' which is too long winded and really could do with a technical tweaking. The embeddability of 3D models is covered in a hit and miss fashion. For instance the chapter on Director 3D is on the CD.

I am reasonably positive about this book but I got the feeling that the author was upgrading an earlier version. From an educational perspective, the organisation of chapters and their goals is not ideal. However, there are really very few good texts on Macromedia products around. This is a very reasonable and sustained effort. At some stage it would be very useful if Macromedia actually listened to what their customers are looking for in instruction manuals. Until then, this type of book will dominate the market. Competent but not great.

ok lets be serious
Okay i cant lie, this book helped me out during my noob years while learning Director. Its not for the hardcore users that already have a great and powerful background. If your new to director mx then this is for you no questions ask. It teachs all the basic stuff that you will need to understand how director works.