Review: Macromedia Director MX

Product: Director MX
OS X: Yes
Classic: No
Publisher: Macromedia
URL: http://www.macromedia.com/software/director/
Category: Interactive Media
Price:
- $1199 USD new license
- $399 upgrade from Director 8 and 8.5
- $499 Education pricing
Requirements:
- OS 10.1.2 or higher
- G3 Processor
- 128MB RAM (I'd recommend 512)
Rating: 4 bounces, Pure Lust

Director MX box shot

Macromedia has added another application to their MX lineup - the much awaited Director MX. MX of course adds OS X compatibility, but Macromedia usually sets the bar pretty high with it's upgrades, and Director MX does not disappoint...

New Features

There are really three major enhancements and additions to Director MX that I'm going to focus on in this review. Overall, Director is already a full-featured, mature application capable of creating industry leading ("standard" doesn't really adequately express the power of Director)online and media-based interactive applications and presentations. Previous incarnations of Director have added 3D support, video integration, TONS of drag and drop scripts, font embedding, and support for importing all major file formats. Although there is not a giant laundry list of new features in Director MX - keep in mind that this is an extremely polished release - that's mature enough that there is not a lot to add...

So, I'm going to focus in on 3 features that alone are worth the price of admission.

Accessibility

If you develop interactive media - this word should not come as a surprise. Accessibility is the big word in Web design today. For those who need a quick refresher - accessibility provides access to content for those with disabilities. I have a serious interest in accessibility at the moment - as I consider it both a hallmark of good content integration and ethical design. Designing accessible content is simply the right thing to do.

Director MX adds some jaw dropping accessibility support for both sight and hearing impaired end users, and those restricted to keyboard navigation. The most impressive of these additions is the Speech Xtra and text-to-speech behaviors that allow Director to function as a "screen reader" via the operating system's built in text-to-speech capabilities. In layman's terms, this means that all text in Director can be spoken aloud to visually impaired users through the Mac OS 9 and X text-to-speech engine (ala Victoria and the gang) and Microsoft SAPI 4 and 5.1 on Windows - WITHOUT needing additional screen-reading software enabled. This move from Macromedia really ups the ante regarding industry-wide implementation of accessibility guidelines.

In typical Macromedia fashion - these features are fairly easy to enable and utilize in Director MX. There is an Accessibility option in the Library panel that brings up all the relevant behaviors. One simply needs to add the proper behaviors to sprites in the scene to enable (or disable) text-to-speech. The most difficult part of this process is the remembering the order to apply the behaviors - something that comes very quickly with a wee bit of practice. Once you start adding accessibility - it comes quite naturally.

Following on the heels of text-to-speech features are captioning behaviors for hearing impaired users. If you have a movie or sound with spoken word introducing or delivering content - you can now add behaviors to provide captions for the narration. You can specify the text to be displayed - and use a fairly straightforward "Accessibility Sync Caption" behavior to sync the displayed text with the spoken narrative. This, to use the fancy academic technical term, is very cool.

Finally, Director MX allows you to enable keyboard navigation for button sprites on the stage so mobility-impaired users can tab to buttons without using a mouse. You can even specify the order that tabs are selected (a "focus ring" will appear around the edges of the sprite's boundary) to simplify navigation. Once again - this is a very easy behavior to utilize via the Accessibility Library.

Obviously Macromedia has taken a very serious stand on implementation of accessibility features - and the best indication of this is how nicely all these features work together. It is easy (and to be honest, somewhat necessary) to use these accessibility features together - as text-to-speech and captioning behaviors both require keyboard navigation to be enabled before you can apply them to sprites. I admit I found this annoying for about 5 seconds until the sheer audacity of the development team showed through - you are forced to make REALLY accessible movies - for all audiences. I had a very real "no kidding" moment as I realized interactive design just got a (not-so-subtle) push to the next level from Macromedia. Bravo, seriously.

Once again - before we move on to other features - I just want to jump up on my soap-box and reiterate my personal stand about interactive accessibility. Designing interactive content for ALL users isn't a good thing to do - it's the right (read: ethical) thing to do. Macromedia has taken a stand with Director MX (and Flash MX) about accessibility - and Director MX is worth the upgrade for these features alone. In fact - I'd recommend an upgrade to any Director user simply to implement these features on older projects. Oh - and these features (including the ones I haven't discussed yet) work through the Shockwave 8.5.1 plug-in - so users don't have to download a newer version of the plug-in just for Director MX content. Once again, Bravo Macromedia.

Flash Integration

Director MX has some nice new features that should appeal to Flash users looking to make a jump to more robust technology. Through Lingo (the scripting language for Director) you can now control imported Flash timelines, variables and objects. In addition, you can use Flash to jump to different points in the Director Score (timeline) and send XML data to Director. I consider myself to be a fairly competent Flash and Director user - but there are Flash integration features that remind me that I definitely come from the Design side of the development spectrum (read: some of this stuff is way over my head). There are also Lingo commands for use with the Flash Communication Server - and the Lingo commands mirror the Flash actionscript commands.

The basic user will be very pleased about the basic Flash integration features - simple importing as a cast member, linking to the original file, and much like the rest of the MX apps - the ability to easily launch and edit Flash content in Flash and have the changes updated in Director. Imported Flash cast members can be scaled, rotated, colorized, skewed and streamed using Lingo as well.

The resulting integration feels like the workflow present in the Dreamweaver / Fireworks combination, and is very appealing to a Flash user like myself.

Workspace and Workflow

Speaking of Fireworks, you can also import Fireworks PNG files as cast members without having to export from Fireworks MX. Actually - Director MX can use Fireworks as an external editor for all bitmap file formats. If you need to tweak a bitmap - double clicking it launches Fireworks. After editing the file, the new saved bitmap is automatically updated in Director. You can also optimize Director cast member graphics in Fireworks - simply updating the cast member when you are happy with the results.

It gets better - if you are importing web-based navigation and rollovers that you plan on re-using in Director - the imported rollover behaviors are recognized and enabled inside Director. This can make a transition to Director fairly quick and painless for Dreamweaver / Fireworks users looking to expand their knowledge of interactive media.

Finally, there is an included Xtra with Director MX that allows you to export from Firework specifically for Director MX. You can export layers or slices to Director to be included as individual cast members with functioning rollovers and correct layout in Director MX. Talk about not having to change your workflow - this with Flash integration is a landmark step to making Director that much more accessible to Web designers. Fireworks will even correctly export what I call complex rollovers (also known as disjoint rollovers) that have slices that change another area of the canvas.

The workspace has the MX look and feel - with panel groups and that sweet aqua interface.

Last but not least, Director MX has the single most impressive workspace tool of a MX application - unified Inspector Panels that allow quick and easy access to all properties of objects, behaviors and cast members. The MX applications all have included context-sensitive Inspectors that greatly enhance workflow, and Director MX is no exception.

Summary

Director MX is a full-featured, mature interactive development application with significant workflow and MX integration enhancements. Director MX also includes robust accessibility features that are alone worth the upgrade.

All of the Director MX features function through the existing Shockwave 8.5.1 plug-in, so existing end-users do not have to upgrade browser plug-ins, and Director exports stand-alone projectors for both Classic and OS X operating systems.

I'm completely floored with the Accessibility upgrades, and I would recommend without reservation that all Director users not only upgrade, but update older projects with the new accessibility features.

- Joel Davies

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