Inside are all the elements of the Director interface, which is especially helpful since it can be hard to work with the Stage, Cast, Score, and Sprites all at once. Director, after all, necessarily deviates from the normal software approach in which you have one main work area such as a text editor, a spreadsheet, or a drawing space.
There's plenty of hands-on work by choosing and managing color, text, sound, and video. The guide takes you to the point at which you've created a movie of your own and can deliver it, via Projector or via Shockwave movie, for the Web. The trickier aspects of Director are explored--its scripting language, add-ons, and interactive behaviors--but these are just meant as an introduction to the next step in your multimedia career: building highly customized, detailed projects worthy of a pro. --Kathleen Caster