Introduction

When a simple animation program called VideoWorks first appeared on Macintosh desktops in 1985, no one expected that ”under the name of Macromedia Director ”it would evolve into the leading tool for creating interactive multimedia. Over the years , Director has been a pioneer in giving creative people the tools and the framework they needed to bring their ideas to life and distribute them in an increasing variety of formats, from floppy disks to CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, and Web pages.

Director MX, the latest version of Macromedia's all-purpose authoring program, allows you to combine images, text, sounds, music, video, and even 3D objects into fully interactive "movies" that put the user in control. Its capability to handle all sorts of media allows you to repurpose content ”for example, to distribute an interactive presentation as a stand-alone CD-ROM and also as a streaming Shockwave movie ”with a minimum of effort.