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NOVEMBER 25, 2002 First Look: Macromedia Director MX
And the Message window has also been refined into two panes: input and output. So, in the Message window's output pane, you can be viewing information about statements while simultaneously entering Lingo commands in the input pane. Like the Script window, the input pane also gets new buttons for workflow, such as alphabetical and categorical Lingo references, scripting Xtras and others. 
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In the area of depth, Director MX offers several new Lingo definitions, particularly in the area of accessibility--a big push on Macromedia's part for making Web content accessible to those with physical impairments. The new Speech Xtra automatically converts text to speech, and behaviors provide controls over speech, highlighting spoken text, captioning and tabbing. (Tabbing allows developers to control the order of accessible content.) There are 19 new Lingo methods supported by the Speech Xtra.
And the rest The most expansive features by far in Director MX are in the categories of integration, workflow and extensibility. But there are some new features that fall into the miscellaneous category. Mac OS X support is chief among them, including the ability to author in OS X while creating projectors for both OS X and older versions of the Macintosh operating system. 
Enhancements on the Macintosh side include an Aqua-fied user interface and optimizations for the G4's AltiVec engine. Oh, and, by the way, it doesn't run in OS 9. It's purely an OS X application. You can still (obviously) create cross-platform content through the Shockwave player, which, incidentally, does not need to be updated to support this latest Director release. Content produced in Director MX will work with the Shockwave 8.5.1 player. But, much to the chagrin of many, you still can't author Windows projectors on the Mac, or vice-versa. And, finally, it also gains support for Apple QuickTime 6, including the ability to stream MPEG-4 content. Wrapping it up For a number of developers out there, Director MX will not seem like a huge upgrade. (To be sure, there are far fewer new features in this full release than there were going from Director 8.0 to 8.5. And, also to be sure, this would be a much more obvious upgrade if Macromedia would succumb to the collective will of the Director development community and release a version that could create projectors for Macintosh and Windows from a single authoring environment, rather than charging for two versions.). But, if you never made the upgrade to version 8.5, now might be the time. The MX version also incorporates all of the massive benefits of version 8.5, including support for interactive 3D, and also adds all of the integration and server features discussed earlier. Plus, if you're developing in Mac OS X, there's no choice at all. Director MX is the only way to go. The benefits are much more apparent for those who want to combine Director with Flash technologies. For Flash developers, Director offers a lot more power in terms of interactive authoring, including support for QuickTime, RealMedia and true interactive 3D content. (And, from my perspective, Director is a lot easier to work with the Flash, despite its deeper functionality.) And, for Director developers, you gain access to Flash MX features within Director, as well as the ability to work back and forth between Flash and Director seamlessly. And, of course, Flash integration now provides access to remoting and allows projects to be linked to databases via ColdFusion and other server technologies. Director MX will be available next month for $1,199 for the full version or $399 for upgrades from version 8.0 or 8.5. Educational pricing runs $499. Director MX supports Mac OS X 10.1 or later and Windows 98SE, 2000 and XP. For more information, visit http://www.macromedia.com. Contact the author: Dave Nagel is the producer of Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; host of several World Wide User Groups, including Synthetik Studio Artist, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe LiveMotion, Creative Mac and Digital Media Designer; and executive producer of the Digital Media Net family of publications. You can reach him at dnagel@digitalmedianet.com. Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Related sites: • Animation Artist • AV Video • Content Mastering • Creative Mac • Digital Game Developer • Digital Media Designer • Digital Producer • Digital Webcast • DVD Creation • Presentation Master • The WWUG Related forums: [an error occurred while processing this directive] 
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