Introduction
Welcome to the Director MX Release Notes. This document contains late-breaking information about Director MX that is not found in the documentation.

In addition to reading the documentation, please visit the Director Support Center for the latest TechNotes and troubleshooting information about Director, including articles with tips and techniques on using Director, printable documentation, and more.

New Features
Author and deploy on Mac OS X
Create Director MX content using Mac OS X, the modern Apple operating system. You can now also author executables that can be launched on OS X systems.

New User Interface enhances productivity
Work faster with a highly customizable workspace that’s shared among Dreamweaver MX, Fireworks MX, and Macromedia Flash MX. The familiar and flexible working environment lets you minimize window clutter and maximize productivity.

Repurpose existing applications to adhere to accessibility guidelines
The drag-and-drop behaviors in Director MX let you easily control speech and tab ordering, as well as synchronize text with spoken words, use in new projects or update existing Director movies.

Tight integration with Macromedia Flash MX
New Director MX capabilities—such as Macromedia Flash MX Launch and Edit, Lingo control over Macromedia Flash MX objects, and the ability to create new Macromedia Flash MX objects from within Director MX—make working with Macromedia Flash MX much more efficient. Director MX developers can Import Macromedia Flash MX files

Enrich communication using Macromedia server technologies
Use the Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX and Director MX together to create multiuser games, distance-learning applications, and real-time collaboration. The Macromedia Flash Remoting Service provides a secure, high-performance connection between Macromedia ColdFusion MX and Shockwave Player. When used with Director MX, Macromedia Flash Remoting MX lets you easily pass data to ColdFusion MX and back.

Quicktime 6 support
Take advantage of QuickTime 6 features including support for streaming MPEG4 video.

Other Important Information
The RealMedia Xtras for OSX are provided for authors who wish to test content on OSX. These are not the final Xtras and have not been fully tested. Therefore, these Xtras are not supported. For more information on using the RealMedia Xtras for OSX, see the TechNote.

For information on Xtras that have been ported to OSX, and other updates to the available third-party Xtras see the list of Xtras at http://www.macromedia.com/software/xtras/director

Future development of the Shockwave Multiuser Server has been discontinued (see TechNote 16688). Macromedia will continue to make this unsupported software available for our users, though we are encouraging people to make use of the Flash Communication Server rather than the Shockwave Multiuser Server when developing new content. The Personal Edition of the Flash Communication Server is located on the CD in the Flash Communication Server MX folder. The Shockwave Multiuser Server is located on the CD in the "goodies" folder.

We support Internet Explorer 5.1 or higher on Mac OSX. However we do not recommend playback in Internet Explorer 5.2 in 10.1.5.

Movies that require the Flash, Speech or Quicktime Xtras and are intended for Shockwave playback either in browser or in a Shockwave projector must have those Xtras included in the movie and marked as "Download if Needed" to cover systems that have not yet pinged and/or updated to the Director MX release of the Shockwave Player.

Documentation Additions and Corrections

Casts
User-defined arrangements of casts aren't saved with the movie, you need to save a Panel Layout set to preserve the cast arrangements. Save Panel Layout set is accessed from the Window menu.

To open a movie that contains multiple casts with only the Internal cast showing, hold down the SHIFT key while opening the movie. Otherwise all casts will appear as tabs in the Cast Panel Group that opens with the movie.

A new cast cannot be created for the second instance of a cast window, until you add another cast tab to it (by choosing an existing cast from the pull down menu or group ... with).

Cast tabs can be navigated through index order with CMD+ Up/Down arrow or CTRL+Up/Down arrow.

Cast Tabs can be navigated through in Tab order with CMD+OPT+ Left/Right arrow or CTRL+ALT+Left/Right arrow.

Open Document windows can be tabbed forwards through with: CTRL + Tab on Windows, OPTION +Tab on the Macintosh.

To open a movie with only the internal cast showing in the Cast Panel Group, hold down the shift key while selecting File->Open.

General
On Windows NT and 95/98 systems, you must have SAPI4 and SAPI5 installed separately to play Text-to-Speech. See the Article on Director MX Text-To-Speech solution. Macintosh systems are speech-enabled right out of the box.

8-bit (256) color is no longer supported for authoring.  Using 8-bit color will likely result in poor display.

The Object Inspector only supports dot syntax for editing.  Old school verbose syntax will display correctly but will not expand into sub components correctly and may not allow editing of sub values.

Authoring only: In the Object Inspector when the playhead encounters a different media type in the same sprite channel, that sprite reference treeview will collapse and may show redraw issues with other sprite references during playback. Reordering the sprite references in the Object Inspector can often alleviate this problem.

UI
The Panel Layout Sets feature can be used to save layouts on a per-movie basis, allowing developers to save not only custom Cast panel arrangements, but also grouped Script windows and custom groupings of Media Editors.

The Director 8-style Panel Layout Set is provided for users who wish to continue using a familiar Director layout.  The provided layout can be modified and changes saved by selecting Window->Panel Sets->Save Panel Layout.

Known Issues

UI
Tab names for script windows: When a new script window is opened it creates an empty Script member.  The member name "Script" appears in the tab for grouped Scripts.  If the script window is closed without modifying the script member, the member is deleted, just as it is for all other media types.  When multiple tabbed script windows all point at empty unmodified scripts, the tab names might be confusing.

Due to the smaller font on Windows, text might become hard to read screen resolutions of 1280 x 1024 or higher.

Panel Sets that have been saved cannot be directly renamed. Instead, you must select the Panel Layout Set you wish to rename, then choose Window->Save Panel Layout and give the set a new name.

If you open duplicate windows for an unlinked external cast, then copy a member to the movie from the external cast this will result in multiple instances of cast tabs appearing in the cast panel group to which the external cast was added.

Dragging multiple selected cast members with 'Drag Cast Member' Button is not functioning. However, dragging from the selection in the cast instead of from the dragwell works on all platforms.

Choosing the Director 8 layout with a movie containing multiple casts will bring up a cast window containing multiple tabs instead of a single window containing the internal cast only.

OSX
Slash (/) is not accepted for the path while generating file on Mac OSX. For more information see the TechNote.

Macintosh computers that do not meet minimum system requirements may experience significant slow downs when:
-- saving after creating more than three panel layout sets;
-- opening movies with more than six casts;
-- opening external unlinked casts
Director MX requires at least 256 Mb of RAM, and a G4 or higher for optimum performance.

On OSX, OpenGL does not initialize properly after CloneModel() in a sprite starting at frame 1. A workaround is to start the cloned-into sprite in frame 2. Or use the Software renderer.

On OSX systems, unlinked external casts (AKA Floating) are hard to distinguish from linked/internal casts. Some ways to differentiate between these types of casts are: external casts cannot be grouped (i.e. tabbed) with other casts; these casts are not saved with Panel Layout Sets; and will close when applying a previously-saved panel layout set.

The shortcut CMD+M stops working on the Macintosh if a Miaw of windowType 49 is open (i.e. a floating window).

General
Authoring only: running a movie for long periods of time with the cast window drawing text members in thumbnail mode can produce out of memory crashes. A workaround is to close the Cast window or put it in list view. (This is true in D8 and D8.5 as well).

After dragging Internet Explorer over the Property Inspector you can't type in Property Inspector fields. A workaround is to close the PI window and re-open it. For more information see the TechNote. (This is true for D8 and 8.5 as well).

Editing Actions in the Behavior Inspector may cause an intermittant crash when there are errors in the getPropDescriptionList handler.  The crash was also present in Director 8.5.  See the TechNote for more information on this issue.

When referencing a non-existant sprite in a linked Director movie (LDM), Director will crash. For example if there is an LDM with one sprite, and in the host movie a call is made to the LDM refering to sprite 2, Director will crash. This is also an issue in Director 8.5.

Editing a script of a linked director movie, while in the debugger mode, may cause the application to crash (Also a D8.5 issue).

Using the OBJ Converter under Windows NT 4 causes a crash. Windows NT 4 is not supported by Director MX.

On a Dual Monitor System when the script window is stretched across 2 monitors, lines may appear in the right hand side of the window when text is selected.

When printing on windows machines, the default number of pages to print shows up as 9999 pages. Users must remember to alter the # of pages.

There may be slight misinterpretations of parsed HTML code within text members. The HTML returned is not identical to the HTML entered. in some cases line breaks or empty space may be added.

Choosing the ink effect in one of multiple docked paint windows will change it in all windows.

Deactivating a Movie in a Window (MIAW) when there is not an editable sprite on stage causes Director to act like there is a cursor associated with sprite(1). Add an "on deactiveWindow" handler with the lingo sprite(1).cursor = 0 to work around the problem. This was also an issue in Director 8.5

When using rateShift on a sound with cuePoints, the sync falls apart and cues become increasingly missed until no cues are detected at all. This was also an issue in Director 8.5.

When using the setPref command is used, a small memory leak may occur. The amount of memory leaked is the amount used to represent the string being written to the preferences file. This was also an issue in Director 8/8.5. See the TechNote for more information.

The debugger does not work correctly when stepping through a "tell statement". When a breakpoint is encountered on the stage movie and the event originated in a MIAW (or visa versa) the debugger will show VOID values for non-VOID variables when stepping up/down the call stack. It will only show the correct variable values for the movie context where the breakpoint or lingo error is encountered.

Debugger performance: Movies containing variables with exceptionally long strings or lists can cause the Debugger mode of the Script window to take a long time to appear. The workaround is to collapse the Debugger splitter bar prior to debugging Lingo code that contains variables with references to long strings or long lists. After collapsing the splitter bar the debugger panes are no longer visible and its contents will not be updated. For further nformation, please visit the Director Support Center.

Flash
Flash Communication Server: Japanese text becomes confirmed as you type.  Netdebug must be removed from the Flash file prior to being imported into Director for Japanese text.  Movies that include Netdebug will reduce performance and disable Japanese IME.

Using Flash Communication Server, editable text can't be cut and pasted. See the TechNote for information on a workaround.

Don't use the Flash Remoting setCallBack function from inside a linked movie. It will work in Authoring, but will crash in Shockwave and Projectors. For more information see the TechNote.

For security reasons, the Flash settings panel is only accessible on Flash sprites that are Direct To Stage (DTS).  To access settings panel, make sure to enable DTS on the Flash sprite.

Flash integers are converted to floats when passed to Lingo.  This is because the flash number-to-string routing drops the decimal point and trailing zeros so that numbers may print out as integers in flash.  Internally, however, all numbers are stored as floats in flash.  Therefore, any flash numerical values obtained in Lingo will be floating point values.

3D
Getting the Image of a Shockwave W3D member results in an eventual crash. See the TechNote for more information.

On the Macintosh, 3D text cannot be edited while it is set to Direct To Stage. See the TechNote for more information.

If you attach a behavior to a 3D sprite that contains a mouseUpOutside handler, that handler will not be triggered when a mouse up outside event occurs. This is D8.5 behavior.

The Object Inspector lists some 3D Lingo properties which are not supported, including ShaderReference.nextShader and CameraReference.targetModel. These properties are used by the Lingo engine and are not supported for use in Lingo scripts.