Director® 7 and Lingo¿ Bible

Rating:
Summary: A Work of Art
Review: As all other books start off, you'll start with a project and more elements are slowly added in as you go thru each chapter. Of course there's the usual side notes, explaining certain tips, concepts and more advanced features. It starts off with the basic controls, but doesn't get carried off by explaining every single one, which can be good or bad in a way.

The book goes with idea that if you know some of the controls, you can figure out the rest. After dealing with various multimedia features of Director, it finally reaches the Lingo language, but rather than explain the basic semantics, its starts quickly with functions and procedures which hopefully can be figured out later.

If being proficient in Director is what you aim to be, then this book is definitely a good buy. But if you're more into average projects with decent animations, and yet can't be bothered reading too much or knowing too much too early, then you'll be better off with the Visual Quickstart book. I found that after covering more than half the book and finally reaching the Lingo chapters, I stopped coz I felt I didn't need to know all that unless I was doing hardcore projects. Besides, its also cheaper than other books which are just as THICK.

Rating:
Summary: Harder to use than Director itself
Review: I have both this book and Director 7 Demystified. They both have their strengths and weaknesses but if I had to choose one out of the two, I would definitely go with the Director 7 and Lingo Bible. It has more real-world examples and techniques than Demystified and is much easier to read. In fact, it was my initial frustration with the Demystified book that lead me to search for a better one.

I just finished my first real Lingo project about a week ago. The project required an undetermined number of sprites to be created and used and thus I needed to use objects to create and control sprites. Although Demystified goes into Object Oriented Programming, it stops short of explaining how to apply it to dynamically creating sprites (as would be required for any game-type application). The Bible, on the other hand, was clear and precise about this and led me to finally understand OOP and how to control sprites using OOP in Director.

Demystified is not a bad book, don't get me wrong: It is huge and has lots of information in it. I just find that the Bible constantly has the answers I'm looking for as I work on real-world applications whereas Demystified, in spite of it's size, frequently doesn't.

Rating:
Summary: A Work of Art
Review: I started with Director 7 Demystified and found that after reading that book I didn't know what I was doing. So I picked this one up, and it covers many many details that the Demystified book does not. The example files that you work with are commercial quality (those Swifty examples in Demystified were some of the ugliest files I've ever seen). In summary, I want to congratulate the authors on putting this outstanding book together; the amount of effort the authors put into this book is obvious from the first chapter on. Thanks for making our lives a little easier.

Rating:
Summary: Clear, practical guide to Director 7
Review: I turned to this book after making the mistake of buying Lingo Sorcery to learn object-oriented programming in Director. It was a great relief to find (at last) a coherent introduction to OOP in Lingo, with lots of examples in the text and code on the CD. The rest of the book is terrific, too.

Rating:
Summary: I almost ate it...
Review: Like this book needs another 5-star review. It's just that I e-mailed the authors with a fairly advanced (for me) question and that Nyquist character sent me an excellent answer right away. So I thought it would be nice. I didn't end up eating it though. Yet.

Rating:
Summary: Harder to use than Director itself
Review: The format and tone of this book are geared for beginners, but it contains solid shortcuts and clean Lingo code that will benefit intermediate and advanced.

The Lingo section is clearly written and presents concepts in a well-planned sequence, but the type size and leading are so large that it's difficult to find specific information and there's relatively little actual content on each page. The authors provide powerful custom handlers but they don't differentiate them from built-in Lingo. Related Lingo appears on tables in appropriate sections, but it's usually necessary to get back into the reading stream in order to find the right code or syntax. The index references topics and subtopics, but no Lingo directly.

The book promotes poor design with its main tutorial project, an amateurish sci-fi scene with a badly designed user interface and 3D graphics that look dated already. If you're think about this for a course in professional interactive design, consider others.

Unlike other reviewers, I find that D7 Demystified is ultimately easier to use. It's easier to compartmentalize than D7 & Lingo Bible, and it's an excellent reference. This book does present better programming concepts, but its linear approach drastically reduces its usefulness.

Rating:
Summary: Genious
Review: This book is really user friendly with lots of examples and illistraions and at no point was I ever lost, never! With all the examples that are available one learns quickly and before you know it you have reached the end of the book. To all the authors I would like to say with confidence that you have put a great book together, including every little detail and yet keeping it simple enough for one to understand. I cannot wait for Director 8 and Lingo Bible as I will be the first one in the cue to purchase the book.

Rating:
Summary: I agree with the reader from Syracuse, NY
Review: This book is something amazing, why I am telling you that, the reason is that this book helps me to learn DIRECTOR 7 for only 4 days.A Great and easy guide tour will help you to know everything about this program.You have lots of exercises and step by step system of leaning, from the start until the end, where the final product is waiting for you...multimedia show. Good luck !

Rating:
Summary: I got a complaint...
Review: This guy wrote a damn good book, but I do have one complaint. Sorry folks, but I got really sick and tired of that darned lander that was in most of the examples.