Director Article

Terminology differences
The Macromedia Flash and Director user interfaces share many of the same concepts, but use different terms to refer to them. The table below associates Director user interface and movie elements to the corresponding elements in Macromedia Flash.

Conceptual differences
Even though there are many parallels between Macromedia Flash and Director, there are a few key differences that you should be aware of before starting to create movies in Director:

• A Director movie has only one timeline, called the Score; Director movie elements do not have timelines independent of the movie's Score. Because movie elements in Flash movies can have their own timeline, the movie hierarchy of a Flash movie is tree-like, similar to the directory structure on your computer—whereas the Director movie hierarchy is flat.
  
  
• In Macromedia Flash, layers can contain multiple objects; in Director you can only have one sprite in a channel at a time. You can change the sprite in the channel, but two sprites cannot occupy the same channel at the same time. Director channels, like Macromedia Flash layers, determine the stacking order of objects on the Stage, but in Director the order is reversed, and sprites in higher-numbered channels appear in front of sprites in lower numbered channels.
  
  
• Every element, in a Director movie, including artwork created on the Stage or using one of the media windows, is a cast member that automatically appears in the Cast window. You do not need to convert Director elements to cast members in order for them to appear in the Cast window, in the way that you need to convert Flash elements to symbols. Unlike symbols in Macromedia Flash, Director cast members cannot contain other cast members and do not have their own timelines.
  
  
• In Macromedia Flash you attach scripts to specific objects or place them in an Actions layer. In Director, scripts are cast members that can be reused and attached to different frames or sprites in the movie. If you use the same script for multiple sprites and want to change the script for all of the sprites, you edit the script cast member and the script is automatically updated for all of the sprites.
  
  
• Macromedia Flash and Director handle scripts differently. In Macromedia Flash all events are attached to a specific button, frame, movie clip, sound or other element, and are not reusable or separate elements in the movie. In Director, scripts are separate cast members that can be associated with more than one movie element (cast members, sprites, or frames). The exception to this rule, is cast member scripts which are defined for a specific cast members. When you define a script or handler in Director, Director looks for the event according the event model hierarchy. In Macromedia Flash, the scripts are executed when the Flash element they are attached to is encountered in the Timeline.