"Wandering an hour through the streets of SF after Zav's Lobster Feed looking for Canter's place in the rain."

Ahhhhh, the image of Director developers wandering around Potrero Hill draws so many analogies:

1. Think of this wander as developers looking for a solution to their problems. Like the Israelites being kicked out of Egypt, crossing teh Red Sea into Canaan.
2. Or is it "We're trying to find that damm PutNetText command - it's gotta be in here somewhere!" How can you write client/server networked based apps without that?
3. Or maybe it's the "Gee do you REALLY think Dreamweaver is gonna save the company?" I wouldn't hold my breath.
4. Or maybe it's the proverbial "Out shopping the company around" metaphor. "Gee the stock USED to be 60, why can't we at least get 20...... wah!"
5. Or the 'next generation authoring paradigm' rap.
6. Or Scalable Content. Yes that's it - it's the Great "Scalable Content Pumpkin Patch Scavenger Hunt Award!"
7. Other images that work include:
   • the incredible "let's find false returns from Lingo" bug-test fest
   • How to bog down Director in 5 easy lessons
   • "What do you mean I have to write an Xtra to talk to a database?" remarks
   • "What do you mean it ONLY works on a PC?" statements!

Aw christ. The Donner party on the way to Canter's house. I can see it now. Fatigue sets in on the way up Potrero hill. Roy, who had been stuffing lobsters in his pockets at the last Lobsterfest, waits for a chance when no one is looking to break out the shell cracker and gain nourishment from the milky flesh of one of his captive crustacians. A swift handshake quickly reveals that he has lobster juice on his hands and chaos breaks out half way up the hill and towards salvation. The starving party struggles to retain their sanity in the chilling drizzle while dark BMW's drive by, drenching the party one again. Surprisingly, amidst the fervor, one member of the party reaches into their parket to find a dry joint and a lighter - enough for everyone. Moments later, with the party subdued, Roy's lobsters set free in the local creek, and a bad case of the munchies setting in, our valiant group of tepid explorers sets out up the hill with a smile on their face, a song on ther lips and red in their eyes.

"Hi ho, hi ho
It's off to Marc's we go"

Sneak Peeks

Can you say Flash asset Xtra?

How about a Powerpoint import Xtra?

Java from Director?

There were some pretty amazing things in the sneak peeks but some of the interesting was the Flash asset Xtra.

It lets you import Flash elements into Director (including) JPEG files and lets you do cool things like rotation and scaling.

Much fun.

Well Steve Jobs did not drop any bombshells, but was charistmatic. He's the dude if there are any that can rev up Apple.

"OpenDoc is dead", well pretty dead.

the new QuickTime, if we ever see it, will be awesome.

And as the newswires picked it, after a week on Hawaii he may consider the dropping of the "interm" part of his title.

Zac, W. Dana Nuon, and Andy White gave a (rushed) overview of ObjectShop, the API for OOP-upped lingo. And unlike other stuff shown that same day, we saw some actual code, and it will be free.

Take a spin to http://www.pixelgeek.com/pg/objectS/

"Shockwave and the future plug-ins".. well no one admits they love plug-ins but "they aren't going away." Mike Serry demo-ed the upcoming (or already available) Java applete that we can all use for "seamless" embedding. Weill, if the number after the NetScape version is "4".. using something called "jar" files, Mac or Win browsers will get a seecond window to macromedia's download center, and a click will to the dl, install, and let you continue w/o restarting the damn browser.

We also saw preview for the AfterShock application (being first done for Flash but soon ShockDir; this is a visual interface for creating the holy grail of optimum HTML for embedding, i.e it does all of the javascript/vbscript browser,version sniffing. This will be a freebie by (?) december..

And very soon, Flash to Java. And for Director, a Director to Java Exporter, with 15-35k player class files. "Lingo Conversion? Jingo? Lava?" Graphics wil be exported as GIF or JPEG (even nif they started in Director as PICT, BMP), and sounds go to 8 bit ulaw. You can include extra Java code via sort of comment line markup tag inside your lingo.

tres cool. Oh, ther will also be a compatibility checker built in to tell you what wont make the java trip.