no amount of scriptexecutionstyle = 9 was able to
convince it to deal with my D9 MIAW syntax.
What syntax are you referring to? The scriptExecutionStyle property only
affects the behavior of the window() function itself:
scriptExecutionStyle = 9:
If you provide a name to the window function
What about syntax like: _player.window[x].movie.someHandler()
and all the other DOM stuff? Isn't the validity of this
governed by the SES?
Nope. Regardless of the SES value you can still use the syntax you cited,
again, the SES property only affects those particular top-level functions
and
Michael,
I want to find the runmode, so what would be better to use when the
scriptExecutionStyle = 10:
X = the runmode
Or...
X = _system.environmentPropList.runMode
Does it actually matter?
Your choice, both are equally valid. The scriptExecutionStyle property only
affects a limited
All,
the below was copy/pasted from one of the other DIR lists:
Developers,
Today Macromedia announces a comprehensive update to both Macromedia
Director and the Shockwave Player.
Thanks Buzz, I did post the announcement
Developers,
Today Macromedia announces a comprehensive update to both Macromedia
Director and the Shockwave Player. This update includes a wide variety of
changes to both the authoring environment and the player, including but not
limited to:
- dozens of bug fixes across the product, including
Evil,
ok, perhaps they are under a lot of stress, but they arent explaining
themselves much either, upon the question of fully operational LDM's
whats your engineering team say about it? where is the QA about it,
where is the explanation about why it's apparently so hard to do
something
Peter,
There are only those languages that you have listed and not a
one more. I wonder, is there a possibility to localize sw installer
to some other languages? (Russian, Ukrainian?)
Is it possible? Yes. Localizing is just a matter of some string updating and
then testing the installer to
All,
I'd like to let you know that we've recently updated the Shockwave Player
public beta installers, the most notable new additions as of late are Mac
slim installers and the Multiuser Xtra is back in as part of the slim
default set of Xtras. You can download the beta from the following URL:
Hey gang,
I'm just dropping a reminder that the deadline for content proposals is
Monday, so if you're interested in giving this a try please get in touch
with us (well, Emmy ;) ) ASAP, thanks!
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Manager - Director
http://www.markme.com/thiggins/
...
Dear
Peter,
What surprisingly is in this compact installer is that it
doesn't show in the Add/Remove Programs list on my Win2000
(English).
That would be a bug I believe. If you haven't already please make sure to
submit that via the feedback form, I'll alert the QA team as well (covering
it from
Not knowing MACR's take on the duell, I'd be extremely
sceptical about this.
What are you skeptical about? We're seriously interested in hearing some
content proposals that we would then work with you (if selected) to create
and promote. Where's the skepticism coming from? I'm just trying to
All,
closeRequest is not in Dir MX 10 Help, but there is a
Technote on it at
http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/closer
equest.htm. It says this is an undocumented feature of Dir MX 10.
Please note that while this failed to make it into our documentation (late
addition
All,
Now, here's the rub. Sometimes installers will put Dirapi.dll, Iml32.dl,
and/or msvcrt.dll into the Windows system directory. ...
While this is correct, somebody has installers somewhere that do this, it
doesn't _appear_ to be ours (MACR's) that do this. We recently faced some
nasty bugs
All,
But if the projector is not Fast Start, aren't the DLLs
simply included within the executable?
Standard projectors contain copies of all the needed DLL's.
Compressed projectors (not found in MX'04 anymore) contained compressed
copies of the needed DLL's.
Shockwave projectors don't
I am not sure what you mean by ink modes in copypixels.
Any examples?
Here ya go:
destImg.copyPixels(srcImage,destRect,srcRect,[#ink: 36])
The above applies ink 36 (bgtrans) to the copyPixels operation, there are
many options you can use here (blend levels, masking options, and more).
This
Slava,
Shouldn't your Point 4 include and any subfolders within
it?
For the DLL files I think the answer is no, they might have to be top-level
in the Xtras folder (someone want to test that?). For any Xtras then the
answer is yes, up to five levels of sub-folders IIRC.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Aha! Now it makes sense. The .dll's are packaged with the .exe, just
like the xtras, but are not really part of the core executable.
They're still loaded at runtime, after unpacking. It appears
they aren't statically linked.
Bingo, it's that unpack then linkload bit you weren't clear on.
Slava: I develop on Windows, and everything that goes in my
xtras folder goes inside a subfolder called pc, so that means
an extra level into the xtras folder for my dlls, and it
worked fine.
Thanks for that confirmation Michael.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Manager - Director Team
All,
not sure why it ends up here.
Previously we wrote to either Director's application folder for authoring,
in Shockwave we wrote to the player's Prefs folder and in projectors they
were written to a folder next to the projector. For authoring and projectors
this was causing problems on both
Charlie,
Nope, I'm speaking of the one titled something like
Introducing Director MX 2004 with a focus on Flash
Integration.
Well, that's good news and that's bad new. It's good 'cause I don't have to
worry about having a low-wattage bulb in my noggin', but it's bad because I
never like to
Is there a way of expressing delete the last char of myString using
dot syntax?
Yes: delete myString[myString.char.count]
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Manager - Director Team
Macromedia
...
[To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
All,
Hey folks, I wanted to let everyone know about a pair of free online
seminars that we're having tomorrow in case you're interested. Anyone can
attend and so I'd recommend that folks take a look at the information found
at the following URL:
Director MX Online Live Seminar Series
any other
sessions)? The one with this description:
Director MX 2004 New Features, Putting It All Together
Speaker: Macromedia Product Engineer Thomas Higgins
Director MX 2004 now includes support for DVD video playback, come see how
quickly this new feature can be incorporated into your
All,
I wanted to put a final note on this thread for I have been to the mountain
and I have spoken with the wise one himself. I asked JHT (John Henry
Thompson, father of Lingo, coder extraordinare) a few questions about this
topic:
1. Where is that lookup table stored?
The symbol table is
That's in the category of just the way Director works. The
symbol table stores the case of the first occurrence of any
new symbol.
Yup. This is easy to test using any new arbitrary symbol. Here's what I just
did in my Message window:
x = #USEALLUPPERCASEFORTHISTEST
put
Have swf1 tell Director to tell swf2 to do it?
(have a handler in Director to be the intermediary)
Or if you're in Director MX or MX 2004, and you're authoring your SWF files
using Flash MX or MX 2004, then just use a LocalConnection object in each of
your SWF's, give them separate names and
Jim,
I've been playing around with the sort function for my
property lists in order to have a sorted list that I
can add properties to at any time in any order and
have it sort it correctly. The problem I'm having is
that when you add numbers like 1, 17 and 129 it only
sorts them up to the
Mike,
is anyone using Director 8 on WinXP? I just ordered a laptop
and it comes
with XP, but Macromedia's site says only 8.5 and up are XP-compatible
(http://www.macromedia.com/support/general/ts/documents/win_xp.htm).
Anyone know for sure? I have no prob blowing away XP and putting on
Are globals between simultaneously playing shockwave movies possible?
Nope, sorry.
Are there other ways of doing this?
Yes! The old school way is to have the two movies share one prefs file
(accessed using getPref/setPref) but that's not exactly ideal. There are two
other options that you
Set the locZ of channel(Foo) = 500
IIRC, locZ is setable for a sprite not a channel, but I could
be wrong. How about you try it and let us know what happens? ;)
There's trouble here with locZ and with visible. Under the hood both of
those properties act as if they were _channel_
Tom?
Huh? What? Oh, that's me...
Am I missing something, or is there really no functional
MuiDialog Xtra for Mac Classic for Dir10?
Maybe you're missing something as I just did a quick check of my DirMX'04
installation on OSX and I do have a Mac OS9.x Mui Dialog Xtra. Starting with
wherever
All,
Has anyone figured out what is going on with the Dir10
MuiDialog Xtra for Classic Mac?
And now after my quick check I realize the folly of my ways. In my haste to
answer your initial post I checked a recent internal daily build that does
include the Xtra when shipping Director MX 2004
All,
You know, that raises an interesting question. Since Macromedia have
dropped the requirement for the logo, do we still have to use it for
projects done in pre-MX 2004?
As was already mentioned, yes, you do. You must abide by the license
agreement particular to each release individually.
All,
What timeout object stuff has changed?
Were the changes good/bad/indifferent?
I know Roy already gave a bit of information in response to this but I
wanted to add a little extra (ok, a _lot_ extra) so that the whole story is
clear as more has changed than just timeout declarations. This
F:\All Risk
Training\modules\serviceInterruption\serviceInterruption.cst
The itemDelimiter = \
delete the last item of...
Or to see that in the new MX'04 Lingo dot-syntax:
tStr = F:\All Risk
Training\modules\serviceInterruption\serviceInterruption.cst
_player.itemDelimiter = \
delete
All,
Neither of those suggestions leaves you with the trailing delimiter.
See my few verbose lines to see how to do it.
You're right, they don't. I just wanted to show the two operations to strip
the end file name off in the new Lingo and JS syntax for MX'04, I figured it
was an easy exercise
All,
Thomas:
So...lastIndexOf() is in MX2004? I didn't think it actually had js
methods in it. I only thought it was the *syntax* of js.
That's worth a few bonus points.
Would I make that kind of post without checking that the syntax worked? ;P
We have full-on JavaScript 1.5 core (core
However, when I comment out the forget() line, and just use the
gMIAW.close() line right before it, all works fine. But that
seems like I'm not completing the task.
Does forgetting the MIAW clear the last remaining references to these script
objects? If so wouldn't you then be clearing the
Greg,
In older versions of Director, the title was off when making
a projector and selecting full screen.
In MX 2004, the title appears even when selecting ³Full
Screen². How do you make that go away? I read some vague
lingo things but no specific examples.
It has to be easy.
And easy
What other thoughts do people have about using
this new feature in DMX2K4?
Wow, this is _not_ a new feature. Welcome to Director MX functionality!!! We
introduced Flash Objects From Scripting as a feature last release, it is the
feature that allows you to create and use various Flash objects
However: I expected my animation to render significantly
faster with the renderstyle set to #wire. This seems not
to be the case. I would like the wireframe superimposed
over an existing image, that's why I can't use
directToStage with the 3D text member.
What other ways are there to
Michael,
Here's a simple question for the 3D experts of you:
Is there a way to display a text member in 3D mode as a wireframe?
I didn't find anything on this in the docs ...
Just set the shader's renderStyle property to #wire:
member(text).shader[1].renderStyle = #wire
The above
Michael,
I'm working on two monitors (Win XP). In Flash MX, if I maximize the
screen, it fills up the primary monitor only and I can drag the panels
outside the workspace and over to the smaller monitor. In DirMX, I
can't do that. The Director window has to be stretched out to both
screens
Luiz,
Has the 3D engine been revised? what about the Z-Sorting error??? Has
the antialiasing been improved?
As Colin already pointed out we have not done a major revision of the 3D
engine in this release, we have added a few items but none of them deal with
the rendering layer and they are
William,
What about mediaplayer?
Do you mean WindowsMedia player? There are no built-in commands to test for
that player, sorry. Check for that using 3rd party Xtras (like BuddyAPI for
example).
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
Announcing Director MX 2004, de
Igor,
Does anybody know, is there new features in Lingo?
For examle, for when I write parent scripts, it'll be better
to have an opportunity to use class (parent script)
inheritance, polymorphism and so on...
The changes to Lingo syntax in Director MX 2004 involve dot-syntax access
William,
is there a way to have director check the user's system for installed
media players like QuickTime,Real Player or Media Player and then go
to an appropriate marker in the movie?
To start you can use the following in Lingo:
quickTimePresent() -- returns a boolean (installed/not
Troy,
Please tell us about any improvements in the QuickTime xtra,
specifically performance, and ability to work with wired quicktime
media.
Sorry but we didn't do any work on the QT Xtra this release so no changes
there.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
Mathew,
Dunno if you can speak any more about this, snip
I really shouldn't. Speaking more about it only invites serious pain on my
part if things don't pan out exactly as I describe them. I've learned that
the hard way on these lists before, someone snips a quote out of context,
that floats to
Tom has the Mac debugger window been fixed (can't resize it)?
If you are referring to the resizing issues on OS10.3 then yes, we've fixed
those bugs. If that's not what you meant then can you clarify the bug(s) you
are reffering to?
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Michael,
When will the Shockwave 10 player be made publicly available?
We haven't announced any hard dates so this information is not yet ready for
public consumption (I don't even know of a precise date at this point).
How big is it?
IIRC, the Mac OSX installer hovers around 5Mb and the
Trevor and others,
I know this was addressed by Colin already but to be crystal clear:
will we FINALLY get multiple levels of undo?
No, this is not in Director MX 2004, sorry.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
Announcing Director MX 2004, de lekkerste!
Troy,
All that cool Flash functionality is great, but a lot of us use, the
Multi-User Xtra... and enjoy the fact that we can do things which
can't be done (easily) with the Flash solution.
I won't hold out hope that support for the server will return anytime
soon, but I HAVE to hope that
Can't you just hold it in for another month or so? Because this is
torture. I haven't felt like this since I was 10 years old, Christmas
was a few days away, and that Atari console was sitting right
there in the store window - so close, but yet so far...
Well then I guess I won't tell
Top o' the morning y'all. I'm back, I've had a wee bit of sleep along with a
pint or three and some food. A, that feels better. Picking up where we
left off yesterday...
1. From Grimmwerks:
At some point do you think you can fill up on the coffee and
write down every little thang?
As
How about Unicode support?
Lingo strings do not support Unicode so that's why you're likely having
trouble using Flash assets to render your unicode strings. Once Lingo
touches 'em you're hosed... But wait... There's more! You'll have to wait
for Christmas though, sorry!
Ok, I shouldn't
OK, I've got another one off the top of my head: any
improvements to the MUI xtra (above the obvious need
to fix the broken getURL call on OSX)?
Other than fixing getURL() in projectors, no, there have been no changes to
the MUI Xtra, sorry.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director
All,
Unicode support in the new version?
Please see my previous reply under the subject RE: Director MX04 as I
discuss this item there.
How about 8-bit MIAW masks, like the latest Adobe splash screens?
Yeah, is there alphas, or the old yucky edge variety?
1-bit only. :_( We tried hard to
All,
My apologies for being good about answering questions in the morning and
then dropping off today, but once I get that first round of email out of the
way they(MACR and my managers) back a truckload of work up to my desk and
start dumping. As such I've been buried all day. I'll will get to all
Slava,
Can someone tell us if the new Director MX 2004, with its
expanded media support, adds the capability to record sound
and encode it to MP3? snip
Or perhaps Ogg Vorbis is supported by MX 2004?
Neither of these changes are in Director MX 2004. You cannot record and
encode MP3's nor
Troy,
I see the projector publishing... but what are the MIAW changes?
Docking? For tool xtras?
The changes to MIAWs are _awesome_ IM-not so-HO:
1. Official support for non-rectangular MIAWs and non-rectangular stage
windows! Windows can now also mask themselves. Mask animation is _much_
good news for miaws, but all these new settings (cast members
masks for non-rectangular miaws and projectors, icons, buttons
on the title bar, etc) may be set using lingo?
Or with JavaScript syntax! :) Yes, all these properties are settable in
Lingo or JavaScript syntax. You can set the
Does this mean that we'll have better always-on-top control
for having a couple of windows open over the stage in a
projector as well, for both MacOS X and Windows?
Yes, sort of. If you make a MIAW that is a tool window, it will always
float on top whether in authoring or in your projector.
There may be a third party Xtras which offers live mp3 creation -
Have you searched at http://www.updatestage.com ?
I don't know if you were talking to me or not Buzz, but seeing as you
replied to my post and not Slava's I'll assume you were. Yes, I'm aware of
various third party Xtras that
And I assume we still have to buy any third party Xtras for both
platforms?
Yes.
Xtras and our core player files are still very platform specific, what's
been added is the ability to output the required bits for the other
platform. So yes, if you plan on creating content for various
All,
Here's the answer for previous releases:
And here's the answer for this release: _every_ movie has a display template
that you can populate in authoring, then whenever that movie is opened as
window, the template it contains is read in and used to initialize the
window before opening it.
Peter,
With the new version if I want to create a projector to
run on OS-X using Director on a Windows platform it will not
include the required Xtras for OS-X in the projector that I
publish like it will when making the Windows projector for
example the flash or text asset xtra? And if
Another question, is there a very detailed list of the
changes/new in MX 2004?
No, not yet. I'm hoping to put together a technical FAQ as opposed to the
currently existing marketing FAQ type of documents we have. My idea is
that I've been answering the same questions for a while now (tech
All,
I'm finished for the day, I've had too much coffee and not nearly enough
food or sleep lately. I'm probably not going to get to the last few
questions tonight but I will be sure to pick up where I left of tomorrow. In
the queue for answering/responding to are:
1. From Grimmwerks:
At some
Peter,
Well, while others at dirGames are arguing about the new potential
capabilites of Director, i still use the 8.5.1 one and am happy with it,
so i want to ask just a quick question: why does the Dir8.5.1
logo represent a gear and an arrow pointing to it? Is there some
phylosophical
I've had that error a few times... snip
I think it happens when you make a...
It could very well be the case that it's the vList Xtra then, and it could
be pulling the wrong script error text, indicating that some error with
is3dCastMember is the source when in reality it's not. Interesting.
I originally thought this was tied in to the vList xtra I'm
using, but I just got it from doing 'put basysfolder(prefs)'
in the message window...
A weird alert that says 'is3dCastMember unknown error
code(-2147219478)' --
and I'm not even using any 3d cast members
Well, I just
I _really_ don't want to be one of those troll naysayers --
You've got concerns based on your experience so nobody should keep you from them,
don't drop 'em, keep sharing them. I'll say from the inside that I feel confident that
Director is on an upswing in a number of ways. JHT coming back
Any chance you could elaborate on another?
Another, as in addition to those already on the team (restated: no, there isn't
another big name that I can announce as a recent returning member of our team).
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
DIRECTOR, de lekkerste!
Michael,
Put the timeoutlist[1] works, but I need to access by name, not item,
because there may be more than one timeout going on. Any ideas?
The timeout list is a _linear_ list of timeout object references, therefore you don't
get named access. Your getPos call will fail because in essence
Can one imply from this statement, that JT has returned to the nest?
Either that or you can imply that I live with JHT... :\
(your implication is correct though, mine is in jest)
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
DIRECTOR, de lekkerste!
...
[To remove
Following along this path of implications, this suggests
Director may yet regain it's most delicious status ...
Well in my own mind, along with Febo, Director is already de lekkerste. Always has
been, always will be.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
Adam and others,
Does anyone know who is supposed to be the administrating the xtra
development list?
Stand by, I've just sent an internal email trying to find out who the
appropriate contact would be for this. I'll post a follow-up just as soon as
I have more information.
Cheers,
Tom
Ok, now I'm back with some information. We did in fact just switch from a majordomo
list to a lyris managed list serve. Due to this change the mmxdk list is not currently
joinable by the general public as it used to be. I'm still awaiting what the official
option for signing up is, I'm
All,
Whose problem is it?
Did Apple do something in their code that broke the
original function
or did MM not use the correct function in the first place and
have been
caught out?
I hope someone fixes it real soon, cus it a PITA
Ok, I've got my fire-suit on 'cause I fear the
Richard,
I've already posted this on another forum. I've noticed that each time
you import an image (for example a jpeg of 300KB and 24bits) Director
stores it in the cast as a bitmap of 32 bits (OK, you can choose the
24bits option in the importing window, but it is a bitmap!!) that
becomes
So moviename will return the .dir name used to create the projector.
Anyway of getting the projector name?
Not a dumb question just a dumb documentation omission. Try this:
the applicationName
When used in authoring it will return Director.exe on Windows for example, but in a
projector it
Bob,
For any MIAW's that you open, you can close them in a few ways:
1. The user can use UI elements like the close box that appears in the window's title
bar to close the window.
2. You can make your own button or call your own code that calls the close() method
off of the window object:
All,
I don't know how you can get the properties of the flash object, but
getting the spriteNumber is easy.
Undocumented and therefore not fully supported but give this a try:
tPropList = dbgPropList(flashObjRef)
The variable tPropList will now be a property list where the property names
Peter,
Our computers are interconnected via hub (or router, don't know
exactly). So as far as I understand, I can run SMUS on any machine
connected to network or should there be a special pseudo server pc?
If SMUS should be installed on a special pc, then will the IP address
for dependant
Peter,
Just to make sure I understand this properly:
member(3d).model(Father).parent =
member(3d).model(Child) - this
statement means that the father is the parent of/to child?
Nope. It makes child the parent of father (you set the father's parent property
to the child model). Switch it
Didn't like the its own grandpa explanation, huh?
Unfortunately I replied before seeing your post, otherwise I would have
definitely fallen in-line with your self-granfathering theme. ;)
Um, Heather can have two mommies, Tom... ;)
Ahhh yes, my scripting skills must be rusty. I forgot about
Dang, hit send by accident...
If you like the SMUS platform but want another option (like
Linux/Unix/Solaris support for the server), then consider the Nebulae
Server from Tabuleiro:
http://xtras.tabuleiro.com/
Hope that info helps.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Peter,
In my faculty, we've got sth like 20 pcs connected to local
network and there is an internet connection available to some
of them. I'd like to create a whiteboard to post messages
delivered to all departments. As a delivery platform I chose
MUS (still don't know why was it excluded
Valentin already covered the big parts, yes you can extract media from DCRs
but you cannot extract script text. I did want to add one thing:
An embedded swf will not be directly available in the
ache, but can get extracted from the dcr/cct as
entioned above.
It's key to note that if you use a
Peter,
Actually a question for you all, what's your opinion on what
appears to be the new tactic of having to upgrade Director
everytime a new version of Flash comes out rather than just
updating the Xtra like in the old days?
Pardon me but what old days are you referring to? My
Ok, quick quiz, name two occasions when a Flash Xtra change occurred
away from a major Director release. You could argue that both are
catch questions.
A. Let's define major Director release: a release in which new bits are released
that you are required to pay for. Director 8.5 was a major
Peter,
So my question is: how can I learn (if it's possible, of course)
to think and freely talk Lingo?
I think you just need to continue a spoken language analogy here. I took Spanish
classes in high school, it taught me how to speak from a book using memorized
phrases/conjugations, but not
Jerry,
For completeness, if you did want to pass name/value pairs into your Flash movie then
don't use an Array in your SWF, use a generic object behaving as an associative array.
In my earlier example you likely would have coded your AS something like this:
// create a global array
gArray =
Jerry,
Anyone know how to pass a property list created in Director to
an array residing inside of a Flash file.
I've been doing some searching online but there is not much
out there to go on.
If you just want to pass the values into the Array you can do something like
this:
-- aSprite =
Your turn, Tom.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do in response to your reply roymeo. All I
can possibly do is ask our product management team to look into and address
this, really, that's all I can do. It's not my domain to work on this area,
I don't have access to these docs nor the authority
Kerry,
Yes, you need to void it (or set it to 0, or fido, or
something else). Until
you do, it contains the reference to the MIAW, and Director
won't release its
memory.
When I test on my end the variable that used to refer to the window is set
to zero, at least as far as put() is
All,
You still have to use old lingo for #field member chunk operations.
Try this: put the foreColor of line 1 of member(theContent)
Why?
Good question...
Aah. Thank you, Bertil.
If MACR is listening, that would be a nice bug fix for
Director MX 2016.
C'mon
All,
A quick bit from my end on where undocumented features come from:
1. Something that was implemented but couldn't get to a stable
enough state (due to bugs) prior to shipping in order to get
official feature status.
2. Features that crept in late in the game and didn't recieve
Peter,
Hi Lingo Developers!
When using ColdFusion, you can install the server on your
hard drive and
test your project locally. Can that be done with MUS?
Yes. Once the Shockwave Multiuser Server is installed on your machine,
launch the server and then go to the menu StatusServer and pull
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