Director 7 Demystified: The Official Guide to Macromedia Director, Lingo and Shockwave (Demystified)

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Jason Roberts, Phil Gross

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Pages: 1184 (Paperback)

ISBN: 0201354454

Pub: Macromedia Press

Pub date: 1999-09-08

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 718525

Editorial Review:

The subtitle for Director 7 Demystified is "The Official Guide to Macromedia Director, Lingo, and Shockwave". Weighing in at nearly 1,200 pages and including a CD-ROM, this is nothing short of the truth.
This massive tome, broken up into three sections, covers Director from top to bottom. The first section alone is worth the price of admission, offering a guided tour of the user interface and the basics of creating animation in Director as well as creating interactive Director "movies" for the Web using Macromedia's Shockwave technology.
The finer details of using graphics are explained in chapter 6, which nicely covers some of Director 7's new features such as graphics with alpha channels (for transparency and compositing) and vector graphics (for resolution-independent images and for graphics files that are vastly smaller in size).
The second section, "Digging Deeper," assumes you have intermediate Director experience and long for some real production challenges. Rather than being technically intimidating, the book employs a more conversational approach, which really pays off in its discussion of more complicated tools such as Lingo, the programming language that is the heart and soul of Director.
Section 3, "Special Topics," neatly packages all the loose ends that aren't normally covered: working with multiple Director movies, working with audio, importing digital video, and using and writing Xtras (extensions to Lingo). Most importantly, though, this section teaches you how to debug your Director movies during the development stage using all of Director's built-in tools.
And the book doesn't end there--the last part is a reference section with listings for Director resources on the Internet, a Lingo command listing, keyboard shortcuts, and a listing of third-party Director developers.

The authors took great pains to make this book complete. It is an ideal volume for beginning to intermediate users, and the Lingo reference section is great for the more advanced user. The only drawback is the immense size and weight of the book. Since it's broken up internally into four major sections, it would have been nice (and more practical) to bundle four smaller volumes as a boxed set, making each one far more physically manageable than the brick that this book is. --Mike Caputo

Reader Reviews:

Indepth, Tasty with a touch of sexyiness (0/0 people found this helpful)

sitting down with a cup of earl grey, nice cigar and newspaper in hand I find myself pondering what else is there in the world that makes me go ohh, and I have to say this book made my mouth water! Bieng relatively new to the director scene I had no problem sitting down for hours reading through and examining even the deepest and darkest depths of Director. Wow I thought to myself could this be a book that doesn't make we want to wheep, a book that doesn't make yearn to speek english once again. Yes my friends if you want to read the most enjoyable and easy to read books about director on the market, this is it! I will rename this book: Director 7 made easy.

one minor problem (0/0 people found this helpful)

Of all the Director books I have come across, this is easily the best. Taking the reader from basic sprite manipulation to lingo, with kidgloves all the way. The only down side is the practical examples. Its more of a "how we did this...", instead of "how you can do this...". This is an essential desktop reference for anyone serious about multimedia authoring, with the most powerful tool available for the job.

Exellent followup to Director 6 Demistified (0/0 people found this helpful)

I started learning Director with version 6 and a copy of Director 6 Demistified. This was invaluable and contained everthing I required.

With this update for Director 7, Roberts has continued the well structured approach. I especially like the way the chapters are layed out. Beginners can start from the beginning, but advanced users can skip straight to the areas they need. The Lingo A to Z sections have also been updated with any Lingo new to Director 7 and is shown with a 7 logo in the magrin. This is very useful for experienced users coming from an earlier version of Director.

The only word of warning is, if you have Director 6 Demistified then very little will be new in this release, except the added lingo entries and sections dealing with new technologies added to this version of the program.

v.good book - don't get if you got version 6 demystified etc (0/0 people found this helpful)

buy this book if you don't have other Director books. lingo shockwave and director are all covered and allow people like me who already knew some aspects of director to go straight into the area and level that you want. I am coming along nicely with lingo getting more advanced with Lists etc.. this book is easy to read and understand - it's witty and doesn't patronise the reader. also comes with cd-rom which has actual director files for you to explore and understand. i would only say that you may be able to buy it slightly cheaper on a certain other on-line book store... but if you need to know director, lingo and/or shockwave - then go for it.