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As a Macromedia Flash developer, you're probably thinking "Since Macromedia Flash is so great, why would I need Director?" Macromedia Flash is a vector-based program designed to create and display small files on the web, and it accomplishes this by limiting the types of images and media that can be displayed. Director is a multimedia authoring tool designed to create content and applications for the Internet, desktops, CDs, DVDs, and kiosks. If you want to create interactive content—that includes photo-quality images, full-screen or long-form digital video, sounds, animation, 3D models, text, hypertext, and Macromedia Flash content—and be able to control how and when these elements appear, move, sound, and change while the movie plays, then you need Director.

Director lets you create the most media-rich, high-performance learning, entertainment, and merchandising applications for deployment to multiple environments—including the Internet, CD/DVD-ROM, desktops, and kiosks.

Use Director MX 2004 When You Want To:

Create streaming, interactive, multiuser content using:

• Interactive 2D and real-time 3D animation
• Video: RealVideo, DVD-Video, Windows Media, Apple QuickTime, AVI
• Sounds: RealAudio, MP3, AIF, WAV
• Graphics: JPG, GIF, PNG, PSD, BMP, and more
• Macromedia Flash
• Text and fonts
• Xtras

Deploy to fixed media. The performance, media-handling, and extensibility of Director make it ideally suited for deploying content on CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, kiosks, and other fixed media:

• Get optimal content playback. Fixed media content often involves hundreds of megabytes of data. The advanced dynamic memory management of Director enables quick loading and unloading of this data into system memory for smooth playback.
• Create fully featured applications that can access, launch, and control other applications from within the Director executable.
• Enjoy greater control—such as read/write access to the user's disk—as well as control over devices like joysticks.

Deploy cross-platform accessible content that does not require a screen reader. Director MX 2004 is ideal for creating accessible CD/DVD-ROMs, kiosks, and web-based applications that run on both Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows-based systems. Visually impaired web users frequently use screen-reading software, which reads aloud the contents of a web page. Because Director MX 2004 uses native text-to-speech capabilities within the OS, you can create accessible self-voicing content that works without screen readers or other assistive technologies. This is important in situations where it’s impractical to install expensive screen readers, such as in public libraries and museum kiosks.

Get maximum performance with large files. Quickly load and unload hundreds of megabytes of data into system memory with advanced memory management of Director. The result? A consistent, smooth playback for end users.

Take control with the extensibility of Director. Launch other applications from within Director, use input devices such as joysticks, and integrate custom functionality for the absolute best user experience.

Make your website more compelling and effective by adding interactive, real-time 3D. Use interactive 3D to:

• Enhance the quality of online games and entertainment
• Make experiences such as shopping and learning online more enjoyable and practical
• Increase sales and reduce returns

Use media-heavy content such as bitmaps, sound, and long or high-quality video streams. Make media-rich content that's both lightweight and high-performance with the advanced compression, extensive media support, and fast-rendering engine of Director.

• Director supports many image formats (like GIF) that you can use to create small, non-photo-realistic images.
• Director and its choice of programming languages, the popular JavaScript syntax or the familiar Lingo script, were designed to quickly animate many sprites (bitmaps, vectors, etc.) on the Stage for high-performing content.