Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio Interface Design

Rating:
Summary: GREAT learning tool
Review: DIRECTOR 8.5
Shockwave Studio, Interface Design
Epic Software
PUBLISHER: New Riders
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades

BOOK REVIEW: The very first thing I LOVE about Director 8.5, Shockwave Studio, Interface Design is that it COMES with a copy of the trial version of Director 8.5 on the CD. No waiting for the download from the web site taking 2 hours or more. You can install Director 8.5 and get right to work learning all about the program.

The 2nd Chapter gives an overview of how Director works. Following along in the book and having the program open, I was able to create exactly what the book describes and I have never used Director before. Macromedia products are very user friendly and Director 8.5, Shockwave Studio, Interface Design provides a great way to get up and running with this program.

Navigation options, button behavior, rollover messages and dynamic background images, film loops and MUCH more is described in this book. Want to learn Director 8.5? Grab a copy of this book and spend a couple of days devoted to it. By the end of the time, a reader should have a good working knowledge of the program.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT learning tool
Review: DIRECTOR 8.5
Shockwave Studio, Interface Design
Epic Software
PUBLISHER: New Riders
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades

BOOK REVIEW: The very first thing I LOVE about Director 8.5, Shockwave Studio, Interface Design is that it COMES with a copy of the trial version of Director 8.5 on the CD. No waiting for the download from the web site taking 2 hours or more. You can install Director 8.5 and get right to work learning all about the program.

The 2nd Chapter gives an overview of how Director works. Following along in the book and having the program open, I was able to create exactly what the book describes and I have never used Director before. Macromedia products are very user friendly and Director 8.5, Shockwave Studio, Interface Design provides a great way to get up and running with this program.

Navigation options, button behavior, rollover messages and dynamic background images, film loops and MUCH more is described in this book. Want to learn Director 8.5? Grab a copy of this book and spend a couple of days devoted to it. By the end of the time, a reader should have a good working knowledge of the program.

Rating:
Summary: Director MX
Review: Director MX is out now, but I can't tell any difference at all in anything like features or code syntax. So this book would work just fine for MX, and you can get it for pretty cheap now. Notice, however, that it is a book on interface design more than how to use Director. It goes over Director for the benefit of those that haven't used it before, but mostly it's about putting together interfaces for CD-ROMs and such. There are 15 sample interfaces for you to use if you're interested in throwing some stuff together pretty quickly.

Rating:
Summary: Great book if you have some Director experience.
Review: I bought this book 5 days ago and have worked through several of the tutorials. They are well documented and cover some very practical topics that help make your multimedia projects look professional.

I would highly suggest that you have at least a little experience with Director first because even though they cover some basics at the beginning of the book it moves pretty quickly through it.

If you have used Director before and are looking for a book to help you bring your multimedia projects to the next level this book is a must have.

Rating:
Summary: Not really useful....
Review: I have to disagree with everybody else because.. I think the title should really be "15 Interface You can Copy" The book doesn't really teach you anything about interface design except in the first chapter (just a few pages at that!) I've been using Director for 5 years now and to me, interface design means things like "Navigation Schemes," "Good Layout," "Knowing your audience," "Providing Feedback," and "Using Metaphors." This book gives you 15 of the author's own interface ideas and takes you through the creation. You get stuck with statements such as "Drag the White Sphere member from the cast window into cell 1 of channel 33 in the Score window. Director will display the White Sphere sprite within the Stage window" Duh.. You will find some codes without sufficient explanation. After reading this book you will be able to recreate those 15 interface, but not much more. Read the table of content and you'll know what I mean. No matter what level user you are, you will be better off spending the same amount of money on Gary Rozenweig's "Special Edition Using Director" to learn about Director and Wilburt O. Galitz's "The Essential Guide to User Interface Design" to learn about interface design. When you're done reading these, you will be creating your own 100 Interface Design and teaching others how to do it. Honestly, I'm not even impressed with the 15 interface provided.

Rating:
Summary: Not really useful....
Review: I have to disagree with everybody else because.. I think the title should really be "15 Interface You can Copy" The book doesn't really teach you anything about interface design except in the first chapter (just a few pages at that!) I've been using Director for 5 years now and to me, interface design means things like "Navigation Schemes," "Good Layout," "Knowing your audience," "Providing Feedback," and "Using Metaphors." This book gives you 15 of the author's own interface ideas and takes you through the creation. You get stuck with statements such as "Drag the White Sphere member from the cast window into cell 1 of channel 33 in the Score window. Director will display the White Sphere sprite within the Stage window" Duh.. You will find some codes without sufficient explanation. After reading this book you will be able to recreate those 15 interface, but not much more. Read the table of content and you'll know what I mean. No matter what level user you are, you will be better off spending the same amount of money on Gary Rozenweig's "Special Edition Using Director" to learn about Director and Wilburt O. Galitz's "The Essential Guide to User Interface Design" to learn about interface design. When you're done reading these, you will be creating your own 100 Interface Design and teaching others how to do it. Honestly, I'm not even impressed with the 15 interface provided.

Rating:
Summary: Good supplement to the User Manual
Review: I wanted a guide to take me beyond what was offered in the User Manual so I read a few reviews on Amazon and settled on this book - I wasn't disappointed. There's a lot of application oriented examples here that are not in any of the guides and manuals by Macromedia.