Director 8 Demystified [With]

Of all the applications I've self-taught, Macromedia Director has got to be the toughest one to find a concise tutorial publication for. I tried the Visual Quickstart, which is just that: program features in depth, with no practical exercises. I tried Training from the Source, which focussed mostly on the 3D capabilities, only slightly skimming the rest of this massive program's productivity tools. It seemed for a while there was no one book I could use to get up and running with Director; at one point I literally had four books piled on each other to use as a cross reference!The reason I put off checking out this title was because it didn't cover 8.5, which is what I'm using .... now I'm kicking myself for all the time and money I could have saved picking it up to begin with. The only difference between 8.0 and 8.5 is the 3D tools, and frankly (at least for now) that is a trivial plus to this industry standard, interactive media development tool that I've wanted to get a handle on since getting my first Mac back in '93.Starting with a guided tour of the interface, working through simple step-by-step fundamental exercises, and culminating in a massive Lingo glossary, I'm happy to say my search for the all-in-one-book beginner's guide to Macromedia Director is over. Replete with screenshots galore, as well as a CD rom with tutorial materials and tantalizing sample files (including one created for Oingo Boingo, now how cool is THAT), I must concede with the other reviewers in this section that "Demystified" is the ultimate starting place for Macromedia's defining application, hands down. Now, if only there were more hours to the day ....

I am a student at the moment, We use this Big Book for learning advance Director, mostly for Lingo. This book is just what anyone needs to learn Director, how can you go wrong with a big book like this. The order of this book is little odd, could of done better job for the starters, Next step learning 8.5... here I come..

This book was an excellent read and it kept me entertained from cover to cover. Even the Lingo lexicon was a good read filled with explanations and examples. I have never used Director before, but now we are publishing our multimedia, video-enriched software demo CDs for the company. I must also mention that one of the reasons why I am so impressed by this book is because I'm also highly impressed by Director. I've been using other authoring tools before, but nothing comes even close to Macromedia Director. This, however takes nothing away from the authors of this great book. Some said before that the examples are pretty basic and it's true, but this book is not about graphics design, but about teaching all aspects of Director. And it's a jolly good one in that! Buy it, you'll love it.

Despite the title, this book is the best source for learning Lingo, especially if you're a beginner. I didn't find this out until recently, while shopping for a book on Lingo. After looking over several books, such as Director In A Nutshell, I found myself intimidated by all the scripting and technical jargon associated with Lingo. I was looking for a book that could explain each aspect of Lingo in simplistic terms augemented by examples (both in the book and on CD). After weeks of searching, I discovered that the best source for Lingo was already in my possession. Initially, I bought the book for my college classes, but eventually, because of desperation, I decided to refer to it for examples in Lingo. To my surprise, it covered everything I needed to know plus gave tips on how to efficiently apply the language.This is a great book for learning Lingo as well as the rest of Director. I recommend it to anyone who is beginning to learn the software. The content is easy to follow and ...can learn to create simple movies easily. The only subject that this book doesn't get into deeply is Shockwave. There is a short chapter on it, but it doesn't go beyond the basics. However, there are other books such as Shocking the Web that can get you up to speed on Shockwave. Other than that, I have no complaints about the book and will always use it whenever I have a problem with Director.

I am a computer programmer stepping into the world of Authoring tools to help me build projects more quickly. I have recently learned Macromedia DreamWeaver UltraDev and Flash 5 and was intimidated by the Director trial. Upon purchasing the full version, this was the first book I bought.I found this book very educational in the concepts shown. I was able to immediately grasp the Director paradigms and comfortable in using the program. It was well paced and focused a decent bit on Lingo which was important to me (although it placed plenty of emphasis on the other aspects of Director 8. The examples could have been more interesting but they were very functional devices for understanding the concepts being taught.One chapter in particular stands out over all other books I've seen for other tools. Ch. 10 Building The Interactive Movie provides a walkthrough of the process a developer should take when designing/building a new project with Director. It is only about 40 pages, but is very well put together along with a specific "useful" demonstration project. It was placed in exactly the right place after learning a decent bit about Director.There is also a very handy Reference in the back for the Lingo language. This lexicon will be a valuable resource in future development. As of the writing of this review, I am only half way through this book and it has already been well worth the money and time. I'm looking forward to the second half. I would recommend anyone using Director 8 for the first time to buy this book!