Background

Building on the Macromedia Director Fundamentals course, this two day course is designed to enable designers and web content producers to utilise the power of Lingo and to understand the essentials of working in 3D in Director.

Whether you are building online entertainment, interactive product demonstrations or e-learning content, this course is designed to give you the skills and flexibility to get the most from Director MX.

Day one of the course will concentrate on building Lingo skills including working with handlers, creating non-score based animations, controlling video playback and creating a Shockwave game. Day two will cover further Lingo functions and working with behaviours plus an exploration of the powerful 3D capabilities built into Macromedia Director.

Course Content

DAY ONE

INTRODUCTION TO LINGO
Understanding terminology
How Lingo communicates
Different Lingo scripts: cast, sprite, frame and movie scripts
When to use different scripts
Using the Message window to test scripts
Event handlers
Using variables
Handlers and handler hierarchy
Detecting and logging events
Custom handlers
Working with objects
Properties
Controlling sprites with Lingo
Local and global variables
Understanding event hierarchies
The Object Inspector

USING LINGO TO MODIFY A SPRITE’S PROPERTIES
Control button states based on mouse position
Frame events and sprite events
Using a movie script
Writing custom handlers
Parameters and return values

ANIMATING WITH LINGO
Using repeat loops
Non-score based animation
Using operators and conditions
Dot syntax
Timing a movie to video or audio

USING LINGO TO CREATE A CUSTOMISED CONTROL PANEL FOR CONTROLLING VIDEO
PLAYBACK
Quicktime sprite properties
Optimising video playback
Finding available commands

MOVIE IN A WINDOW (MIAW)
Uses for MIAW
Opening a MIAW
Setting MIAW on screen position
Sending instructions to a MIAW

USING XTRAS
Third party Xtras
FileIO Xtra (creating and
Accessing external files)
Optimising the use of Xtras

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

DAY TWO

INTRODUCTION
CUSTOM MENUS
Creating OS style custom menus for your projector

CREATING A SHOCKWAVE GAME
Collision detection
Controlling sound using Lingo
Using variables to store and retrieve values
Using dynamic text fields to display scores
Creating custom cursors

WORKING WITH SHOCKWAVE
Creating a Shockwave-friendly
project
Optimising file sizes
Using NetLingo
Publish settings

GETTING MORE FROM LINGO
Writing compact scripts
Using behaviours
Assigning properties to behaviours
Creating custom handlers
Working with the message window

WORKING WITH LISTS
Internal and external casts
Using lists and multiple casts
Databases and lists
Using a list database
Using Lingo on the web

ACCESSIBILITY
Accessibility requirements
Applying accessibility target behaviour
Applying accessibility group order
Enabling Text to Speech

INTRODUCTION TO 3D
Using the 3D enhanced
Shockwave player
Importing a 3D model
Playing back 3D
Using 3D behaviours
Installing and using 3DPI
Identifying models and their properties

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS