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Software Review: Director 7 Shockwave Internet StudioPart 3
Initially, I worked my way through the introductory tutorial and created a Director-based banner ad. I didn't have any problems, other than the fact that Director crashed when I attempted to add a Sprite (Sprites are objects that control when, where and how cast member media [i.e. multimedia objects] appear in a movie). Once I re-started the Director software and opened my test movie and tried the procedure again, all went smoothly. Without going through the motions of teaching you how to use the tool here, suffice it to say that Director is not difficult to use once you have worked through the tutorial. Although you can't really just open the program and start working, one afternoon spent working with the software and reading the manual is all you'll need to get started. That doesn't mean you'll be an expert, nor does it mean that you'll have mastered all the associated programs that come with Director; but you will be able to make working examples at least (I made the Shockwave banner below in about an hour).
Once you're able to create a Director movie, you'll want to convert it to a Shockwave movie so you can use it on the Internet. Shockwave is the player which actually enables Web browsers to view Director content. Although usually you'll hear us preaching about why you should never depend on plug-in technology, Shockwave is a category unto itself. Shockwave ships with Microsoft Windows 95/98, Macintosh OS 8, Netscape Navigator, AOL, and Internet Explorer CDs, so it is already available to most Web surfers, and it supports most of the industry standards, such as Java, HTTPS and XML. This makes it both attractive and available, and I wouldn't hesitate to create "Shockwaved" content for a site. If you wonder how easy it is to create the code that looks for the Shockwave plug-in, downloads it if it already isn't installed, and writes the Shockwave movie to the page, you haven't checked out the Aftershock application that ships with Director 7. Not only does it write all the code for you, but it makes sure that your movie works for both browsers. This is a slick little time-saving helper application! [ Click here to move to the next part of the article ]
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