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[4] Other sources of information

• 4.1 Books
• 4.2 CDs
• 4.3 Journals

A couple of books relating to Director 3.1 were in print until fairly recently, but no longer seem to be generally available, and will be thoroughly out of date for most purposes. Make sure you check the version used before buying any Director-related books.

All the books I've seen are written primarily with the beginner in mind; only "Lingo Workshop", co-written by the inventor of Lingo, gives more than the most minuscule attention to Lingo programming. The others suggest that scripts on the level of:

    on mouseUp
      go to frame "tiddlypom"
    end

are brain-numbingly difficult stuff that only the most hardened Director user would come into contact with. "Lingo Workshop" on the other hand, eventually gets on to the more potentially troublesome aspects of Director programming (parent scripts & birthing, lists, MIAWs) in a fairly comprehensive way, though the examples still seem a little mundane (of course, so are the examples *here*, but then this is a lot cheaper!).

For the most part, these books offer a sensible overview of the Director environment along with how-tos for many of the basic things you need to do every day. If you find the whole app confusing or just want a different slant on things from the manuals, almost any of them will probably help. If you are fairly happy working within Director, you may pick up all sorts of small insights and tips, but nothing earth-shattering.

[I hope to have individual reviews of at least some of these books in a future version of the FAQ...]

At first glance it seems impressive. Its subject areas are: Lingo Interactive Dictionary, Lingo Library, General Reference Library, XObject Studio, Director ToolBox, and Resource Directory.

It's a hybrid disc chock-full (595 MB) of tech notes, the Director ToolBox, Director updates, over 100 total Mac/Win XObjects (almost all royalty free), software demos, and all things Lingo. A welcome surprise is that most of the files are movies, not projectors, and much of the Lingo is commented. All of this is accessible from a common well-designed interface.

Something that deserves special mention is the Director ToolBox. This is a suite of both passive (no performance hit) and active (performance hit) utility MIAWS that perform diagnostics and analyses on a running movie: All Sprites Properties, Calculator, Cast Properties, Cast Summary, Clock Timer, Extended Sprite Properties, Free Memory Display, Label Statistics, MemMon, MouseEye, RegPoint Tweaker, Score Scripts Remover, Script Outliner, Sprite Map, Sprite Properties, and System Properties. You access the ToolBox either through MediaBook or by putting a line of code in each of your start/stopMovie hands (open/close window "ToolBox"). This was thoughtfully designed with an open architecture so that all of the above, and get this, ANY OTHER MIAWs THAT YOU ADD are available from a main MIAW called Button Bar. To add your own MIAWs simply put them into a folder called Plug-Ins. Much needed.

A feature that will benefit the beginner is the Interactive Lingo Dictionary. This is more than just a re-hash of the manuals as it contains undocs and many entries have a MIAW that describes and illustrates the Lingo in action; sort of like the long-awaited Apartment II: The Sequel.

I've only scratched the surface. It's impossible to describe everything on it; suffice to say that it will become an indispensible part of my Director development environment.

gray matter design
3215 Broderick Street
San Francisco
California CA 94123
USA

1-415-243-0394 phone
1-415-243-0396 fax

mediabook@aol.com
76530,1633@compuserve.com<
SRP: $299

URL: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/director/faq/faq4.html