Director 8.5 Studio: with 3D, Xtras, Flash and Sound (Paperback)

I've not touched Director for ages, since I got into Flash, but luckily the experience that I HAVE gained in the past stood me in good stead to work through this book - just!

To get into the book you need some experience of Director already. If you have ever touched upon any programming at all then that will come in handy here. You see, even in the first chapter of the book, the exercises you are taken through are not child's play. Someone who has already grasped the basics of Director's Lingo (or Flash's Actionscript), will hit the ground running as they tackle the book's exercises.

When I bought this book, I couldn't resist jumping straight into the deepend, to the chapter teaching Director's new 3D capabilities. However, it soon became clear that i should get a grounding of some more fundamental concepts first, so I slipped all the way back to the first chapter.

I'm still working my way through and it's an enjoyable experience. It's all well written and impressively to the point. I'm learning a lot.

Buy this book if you want a grounding in all the new features of Director 8.5.

Perhaps wrongly, I expected it to be more than a friendly book of examples. I realise that Friends of Ed also publishes a "Foundation" book in this series, but at this price I want more of an explanation of the code I'm being ordered to copy down rather than a simple "do this!!".

I thought I was fairly experienced with Director, having worked through almost all of "Director 7 Demystified", which really takes things slowly and covers everything in Director. "Director 8.5 Studio" had me scratching my head after going through a couple of examples, having working code in front of me, that unfortunately I didn't understand.

Obviously it was the wrong book for me, but that's certainly not true for everyone. If you're fairly well grounded in the theory of a certain area of Director (the chapter names in this book) then this will probably be brilliant to solidify your skills. This book assumes you know quite a lot allready!

This book sets out to show complex examples of important code, and it does! It gets it's stars for that. However, if coming from a beginner or even intermediate Director background, you will need another book to list all the commands available in Director and Lingo. "Studio" shows you how to use some techniques and commands, and doesn't mention the other 80%, often leaving me scratching my head.

At 750 pages it gives you a lot to chew over, but for me it's just a little disappointing that there is no manual-type explanation of Director. I use Director on a student multi-licence and so don't have permanent access to the Macromedia manuals, which are essential to fill in the gaps left by this book.

However, anyone with the manuals or an equivalent "introduction to all of Director and Lingo" book, will surely find some very practical tips and techniques in here that will make him/her a better Director author. So it's a good second Director 8.5 book, which is what Friends of Ed market it as. I would prefer to give it 3.5 stars instead of 3, but it simply isn't useful enough by itself at this price tag to get any more.

This is a good book with clear examples if you are familiar with the basics, it takes things to the next level of sophistication and demonstrates the power and versatility of approaches you could implement in you different projects etc. It comes with a CD of the source files.

1.*Foundation of Director 8.5* is beginner level followed by this book 2.*Director 8.5 studio* then 3.*New Masters of Director 8.5*. Doh! Don't buy the wrong book and expect everything easy to take in.