Roy's List of Books for Director

Date:    Thu, 3 Aug 1995 09:38:51 -0500
From:    Roy Pardi <rpardi@INTERACCESS.COM>
Subject: Re: Need a good book on Director
Using Macromedia Director
from Que Corporation (August, 1994)

The Official Macromedia Director Studio
from Random House (September, 1994?)

Multimedia Demystified
Random House New Media Series

Object Oriented Programming: An Introduction
by Greg Voss, Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1991 ISBN 0-07-881682-3.

Macromedia Director Design Guide
by Cathy Clark and Lee Swearingen (Hayden Books, ISBN 1-56830-062-X)

Macromedia Director Lingo Workshop
Hayden Books

Learning Lingo
by Michael Callery
Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
http://www.aw.com/devpress/
ISBN 0-201-87043-6
$34.95 US cold hard cash
Mac/Win CD of examples included
300+ pgs.

I just got a review copy of 'Learning Lingo' from Addison-Wesley, and after perusal I thought it warrants a plug (I'm easy but I'm not cheap ;-)

This is a worthy entry in the recent spate of books on MMD. It deals exclusively with Lingo in MMD at beginning through intermediate levels. Some good walkthrough examples of fileIO, simple games, hypertext, linear lists and using xobjects, with clear explanations of the programming concepts involved. There are also many good tips and caveats cited concerning the technical and aesthetic aspects of project development, designing for interactivity, and managing media.

Property lists are addressed only briefly, and parent/child (OOP) scripting not at all. (still waiting for the tome on that ;-)

Overall, I'd say its a good MMD resource for anyone wanting to move beyond 'go to' quickly and painlessly.

It registers *** 3 clicks*** on The Imagination Club "We Like Books" quality indicator.

'Learning Lingo' ends with a great quote:

"The problem with programming a multimedia presentation is: If you're a rookie, it will take you forever to put a program together-- and if you know your way around, you will never stop adding things."
--Ken Willis, 16 years old, as quoted in CD-ROM Today magazine