Summary

This chapter started the process of building the booking facility in Director MX. Because Flash MX 2004, Director MX, and Fireworks MX 2004 will be used in this section of the book, the chapter focused on planning the data and how Fireworks MX 2004 and Flash MX 2004 integrate with Director MX.

We started with an overview of the similaritiesthere are a lotbetween Flash MX 2004 and Director MX, along with some of the important differences between the applications. Among the major differences are how each utilizes a timeline, how objects in layers are managed differently, and how scripts are managed in each application.

From there, we discussed the plan of action for the project. We looked at the tasks the booking facility needs to perform and related them to how they can be brought to life in Director MX. We also spent some time reviewing the logic behind the booking facility, where Director fits into the scheme, and the logic map that will drive the database design and coding efforts of the technical team.

We also looked at some of the creative issues that might arise as the facility is designed and constructed . We led this off with a thorough review of the integration aspects of Fireworks MX 2004 and Director MX. We reviewed how to save Fireworks files for instant use in Director. We showed you how a button symbol can be created in Fireworks and used as a button in Director. We showed you how multi-layer Fireworks documents using frames and behaviors can also be added to Director movies with no loss of functionality between the two applications. We finished the section with a thorough review of the seamless round trip editing between Director and Fireworks.

The balance of the chapter was devoted to the Flash MX 2004/Director MX connection. We looked at three critical aspects of this connection. We showed you how to import and play a Flash movie in Director. We demonstrated the round trip editing feature between Director and Flash. We then finished the chapter by showing how Flash's coding languageActionScriptcan be used to initiate events in Director's coding language, Lingo.

In the next chapter, we build upon what you learned in this one and dig deeper into Director MX. We are going to show you how the application is used for dynamic data and review a new feature of Director MXits use of the Flash Communication Server MX.