What s New in 2004

What's New in 2004

First, let's cover what's entirely new in Director MX 2004, namely DVD and Windows Media video capabilities, and ECMA-compliant JavaScript. These features didn't exist before 2004, and they are a welcome addition for many developers. Using the new DVD capabilities lets you play and control video to a degree never before possible. (Note that the DVD capabilities don't allow you to create a DVD for play on a regular DVD player hooked to a television set; they are strictly for playing DVD-quality video within your Director movies.) You're also now able to use the popular Windows Media Video (.wmv) and Windows Media Audio (.wma) as wellthough only on Windows computers, of course.

The new ECMA-compliant JavaScript style scripting abilities open up Director to a whole new audience, as Web developers and others with experience using JavaScript can use it to code in. This new JavaScript code and Lingo, Director's native language, can even be used together in the same project, allowing a broader range of collaboration.

In addition to what's brand new, many aspects of Director have been updated, making it even more productive to work in. Simple things like allowing sprites to be given names, and those names referenced from code, are great additions. (If you don't know what sprites are, don't worry. We'll talk about them in a minute.) Previously, you could only reference sprites by channel number, so if you moved your sprite your code would need to change. The upgrade is a simple thing, but a great time-saver.

The newest version of Flash is also supported, and accessing code within Flash sprites is greatly improved. Director's XML processing has also been upgraded, and a long-standing bug fixed.

Overall, many aspects of Director have been improved. If you're completely new to the program, the improvements will make it that much easier for you to use from the onset. If you've used prior versions, some of the new features should be very welcome indeed.