Lingo in a Nutshell

New Features in Director 6 and 6.5

Score, Sprites, Auto-Puppeting, and Paths

Director’s new Score is radically different and includes a Sprite Toolbar and customizable views. Sprites receive several new messages (beginSprite, endSprite, mouseEnter, mouseLeave, etc.), allowing them to be managed much more easily. Refer to Chapter 3, The Score and Animation, in Director in a Nutshell and to Chapter 2 in Lingo in a Nutshell.

Help and Manuals

The new Help system includes a lot of information that is not in the manuals, plus many useful Show Me demonstration movies. Choose Show Me from the Help menu or from the Help Contents window for demonstrations of many of Director’s new features.

New Behaviors, Messages, Cue Points, and Lingo

Behaviors allow you to easily add multiple scripts to a sprite. Director’s message passing has been radically revised, and there are many new messages, including rollover events and error trapping. Refer to Chapter 2, Chapter 9, and Chapter 12. Director now supports cue points for synchronizing sounds with animation in the Score (see Chapter 15, Sound and Cue Points, in Director in a Nutshell).

Shockwave and Internet Improvements

Shockwave and Director now support streaming playback of Internet-based content. Many Director commands support linking to a URL, and linked cast libraries or streaming Shockwave audio can reside on the Internet. New commands (frameReady, mediaReady, netDone, etc.) support asynchronous operations in Director via the NetLingo Xtra. Refer to Chapter 11, Shockwave and the Internet, in Director in a Nutshell.

Shockwave Audio is now integrated with Director. Local sounds can be compressed as well as those on the Internet. See Chapter 15 in Director in a Nutshell. Shockwave-style movie compression is also available to make your local Director project use less disk space.

New Media Formats and Application Integration

Director 6.0 supports many new media formats.

Tip

Using external media (including sounds) at runtime requires the MIX Services Xtra plus the support Xtra for that particular file type, such as Sound Import Export.

Refer to Chapter 4, CastLibs, Cast Members and Sprites, and Chapter 10, Using Xtras, in Director in a Nutshell for details on file import types and the required Xtras.

New Features in Director 6.5

Director 6.5 is the same as version 6.0.2 with the addition of many Xtras. See http://www.macromedia.com/software/director/productinfo/newfeatures/ and refer to Appendix B. Refer also to Director in a Nutshell, especially to Appendix B, New Features in Director 6.5, and Chapter 16, Digital Video, which covers QuickTime 3.