Book Description

Director in a Nutshell is the most concise and complete guide available for Macromedia Director 7, the premier multimedia authoring tool. It addresses new features in Director 7 and Shockwave 7, but also covers earlier versions for those still working with Director 5, 6, and 6.5. Director in a Nutshell condenses hundreds of Director tips and techniques into a desktop quick reference that is a must-have addition to every Director developer's library. It covers Director's core components (the Cast, Score, Stage, sprites, and animation), delivery and optimization (Projectors, Shockwave, and the new System Player and ShockMachine), and media elements (video, audio, SWA, bitmaps, JPEG, GIFs, animated GIFs, texts, fonts, fields, buttons, menus, cursors, dialog boxes, film loops, Flash, and vector shapes). Director in a Nutshell is the only book to integrate Director's multiple facets into a comprehensive discussion of each topic, including all related Lingo commands. The reader gets both the nitty-gritty details and the bigger context in which to use them. It highlights cross-platform differences for developers under both Windows (3.1/95/98/NT) and the Macintosh. It includes details on optimizing performance, memory usage, productivity tips, keyboard shortcuts, coordinate systems, palettes, the Paint window, Movies-in-a-Window, Xtras, Shockwave audio, QuickTime 3, and Director 7's new features, including dot notation, vector shapes, compressed fonts, sprite transformations (rotation, skew, quad, flip), new Lingo, and the Multiuser and XML Xtras. Director in a Nutshell is a high-end handbook, at a low-end price-an indispensable desktop reference for every Director user.