| The days of squeaky
chalkboards are lending way to the lights, sounds and movement of multimedia
computer-based training and Macromedia's Director
has led the way in providing a powerful tool to educators. Due to its power and
affordability, Director has set the standard for 2-dimensional animation and
interactive instructional design. Macromedia's Shockwave allows for Director
movies to be placed on the World Wide Web. For a taste of Shocked web movies, visit Cutting Edge CALL
Demos and Macromedia's
Shockzone. Director 6 Studio Skills is a nice little guidebook through the options and menu choices available in Director 6. Lauren Steinhauer takes the reader through drop-down menus and dialog boxes with the skill of a personal tour guide/tutor. He discusses each point and option and illustrates most with a short exercise from the tutorial files. A few chapters are worthy of mention. The chapter on Cross-Platform Issues provides practical, straight-forward tips for designing cross-platform applications. This chapter includes information on cross-platform color palettes, bitmapping unusual fonts, and safe sounds. Another highlight of the book are the three chapters on animation. The chapter on advanced animation techniques includes fun exercises and lots of great tips for adding movement and color to software projects. This book is not for the first-time Director user as the author jumps into menu options and terminology by the first two chapters, but it is a good book for those who have already been introduced to Director and are ready for more information on the software. The power of Director comes from its programming language, Lingo, and Director 6 Studio Skills is light on Lingo. One chapter offers "A Peak at Lingo," which provides a short introduction, but the text does not include enough Lingo to accomplish much. Behaviors are new to version 6 of Director. These are mini-Lingo codes that can be dragged and dropped into a project to add interactivity without having to script lines of code. Steinhauer's chapter on "Director's New Behaviors" is a handy reference for those new to Director 6 and the concept of behaviors. He covers each of the built-in behaviors with a short description of what the code will accomplish. One complaint I have with the book is that the title is misleading. I expected a book about the Director 6 Multimedia Studio, which includes Macromedia's xRes, SoundForge, and Extreme 3D. This book contains only information about Director. Another problem with the production and marketing of this book is that the CD-ROM that comes with the book does not contain the tutorial files for the chapter exercises. These must be downloaded from the Hayden Books web site. This appears to be an annoying new trend in publishing as publishers rush titles to press and important errors are made in the accompanying CD-ROMs. While I would not recommend this book for absolute beginners or seasoned users, this is a good supplemental text to beginning tutorials. The production team did a quality job on the index and glossary, making this a handy reference book for Director users.
Written December 4, 1997 Copyright © 1997 Susan Herrington and Jim Duber. |
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