Director

Hello! I wanted to wait and formally greet you from the Macromedia MAX Conference in New Orleans. Some of you might know me from my writing at Director-Online, or from the Macromedia DevNet Center. Others are probably reading this and saying to themselves "Hey... wait a minute... where's James..." In any event, I wanted to report on the conference, give you a taste of what happened in case you weren't there, and finish up by talking a little about what I'd like to see as the new editor of this section.

The MAX crowd this year was a split crew: there were a lot of Flash developers, a surprising number of Director developers, and several folks from the educational community working with Dreamweaver and Fireworks. Then there was the ColdFusion server crew, and they bring with them a slightly different set of issues that many client-side developers just don't have to consider. So the entire conference struck me as a little bit polar, although the crossovers between these groups were interesting.

I spent most of the conference hanging around with Tom Higgins, technical product manager for Director; and Emmy Huang, product manager for Shockwave. In addition, Mark Jonkman, Richard Ross, Brian Robbins (of www.cowboysandengines.com fame), Darrel Plant (of Director-Online), Kristen Banham from IntegrationNewMedia (www.integrationnewmedia.com) and a whole slew of well-known Director developers was there and we all went out and had a night on the town. INM and Macromedia even threw a Director user's party on Tuesday night.

So with all that going on, the question I had to respond to over and over again was the infamous, "Is Director dead?" I'm not sure where this comes from; I've been hearing of Director's demise since version 7. Nonetheless, let me be the first to say, "No, it's not dead." Some feedback I got on Charles' editorial in the November issue (Vol. 2, issue 11) showed me that a lot of people saw his love of Flash and assumed we wouldn't be covering Director anymore. Nothing could be further from the truth. Others kept asking me if Macromedia is actively developing a new version: without getting myself in trouble, I can safely say that "Yes, there is active development on a next version of Director, with significant feature addition and/or modification." Some folks were offended by the fact that Director wasn't mentioned in the keynote for the conference: well, there were actually a lot of products not mentioned in the keynote. The major event of the conference seemed to be the new ColdFusion (Blackstone) and its integration with the new Flex 1.5, so most of the big public speeches revolved around that. I was excited to see Tom and Emmy taking the conference very seriously, talking to their developers, making sure they know the customers. That's our old friend Macromedia!

The sessions were excellent this year. Brian Robbins gave a talk on developing 3D game engines in Director, and if you haven't seen his stuff you really should. He talked about several techniques for "light mapping" a scene to pre-generate shadows (something we will be covering in future articles here), doing some collision detection based on facing surface normals, and about his experiences with the art team on Cowboys & Engines. Mark Jonkman taught us all about using Flash inside of Director, several reasons why this approach has some appeal (like exceeding Director's 1,000-sprite limit), and several ways for Director and Flash to communicate. Tom Higgins gave us a talk on using JS syntax in Director, including how to use some object-oriented programming techniques. He then went on to describe some of the pitfalls of this feature in its current implementation (which are, in his mind, "version 1 growing pains"). He hinted that Macromedia is at least considering an ECMAScript 4 style implementation, which would be very similar to ActionScript 2.0 in Flash. I certainly hope it's more than a hint! I unfortunately didn't get to attend Richard Ross' seminar on creating enhanced DVD content, but I heard good things about it.

In spite of the sessions, MAX was not without its letdowns. The biggest of these was the "Sneaks" session, in which we were supposed to get sneak previews of what's coming. Well, that sort of happened. There were no sneaks of Director this time. There were a few sneaks of Flash, which were neat to see. Most of the time, however, was spent on looking at Flex 1.5, which was released during the conference. If it is released, then it is hardly an alpha; clearly it has been refined and polished. It didn't do justice to the "sneaks" that Macromedia usually hands out. Kudos to the ColdFusion Development Team, which tried to show us something really new but wound up with a Blue Screen of Death. I respect that more than canned, prefabricated demos in a session that is supposed to be beyond the cutting edge.

To summarize MAX, the food was excellent, the beer was pretty good, and I had a wonderful time talking to Macromedia about all things Director, and talking to Director developers from all over the world. In talking with all these folks, I got some great feedback on MXDJ and some ideas for the section. In a nutshell, here is where I would like to see us go:

• Higher-end content. This is not to say we won't focus on the beginning stuff anymore, we will, but there are also a lot of developers out there clamoring for more in-depth coverage of various issues, and I want to provide resources to them as well. I want to provide a true balance of coverage for beginners through experts.
• Games and 3D coverage. It seems a lot of Shockwave developers are making their living doing games or interactive simulations, and resources in this area are particularly scarce.
• JavaScript syntax. This hasn't gotten a lot of press anywhere yet because most developers still aren't using it. But there are a couple of reasons to start using it in conjunction with Lingo, rather than a replacement. Under the old programmer's motto of "use the right tool for the job," we'll be exploring the JS syntax as a tool for specific tasks. If Macromedia is really looking at an ECMAScript 4 implementation, this could be very powerful for potential new users of Director as well.
• Integration. More and more developers are using Director in conjunction with other products in application construction. From Flash to Photoshop to Xtra building, integration is always an issue, and sometimes the edges are a little sharp. Timely focus on working with content and tools that relate to Director is as important as Director itself, and it is an area that is not covered well in any of the documentation.
• Case Studies. Has your company just finished a really cool project using Director (or Director and a slew of other products)? Would the community learn something by looking at the way you did it, or the concept of what you designed? These aren't advertising pieces for self-promotion, but a good case study can teach the community a lot about what other folks are doing and what development practices are in place that you might want to adopt. I'd like to see a handful of good case studies each year, I think it could prove an invaluable asset.

In addition to the above, this column will continue to offer timely information for Director users at all levels, as well as information on integrating Director with other products and solutions. If there is a particular topic on which you want to see coverage, if you think you would like to write an article, or if you think the thing you just shipped would make the perfect case study, then let me know! Charles had one thing exactly right in his editorial last month: this is your magazine, and by extension this is your section. It exists to serve you, the Director user. I'd like to thank SYS-CON for inviting me aboard, and to say how wonderful it was to meet all of you at MAX. To contact me at any time, just send me an e-mail at amp@it.rit.edu.