Director 6 and Lingo Interactive

If you're looking for an in-depth guide to Macromedia Director 6 but prefer the hands-on experience of learning in a classroom environment to the abstraction of trudging through a thick manual, check out Director 6 and Lingo Interactive. This book combines CD-ROM-based exercises with a simple workbook for learning the software in a series of easy-to-follow lessons. First, you get an overview of Director's interface, and then you create a movie, add animations, insert keyframes, add special effects, and create film loops. Next, you enhance your work using the ancillary products that now come with Director and comprise Director Multimedia Studio: Extreme 3D for 3-D modeling, xRes for bitmap editing, and SoundEdit and Sound Forge for sound editing. Finally, you get a thorough introduction to Lingo and learn how to use it to create markers, labels, buttons, visual feedback, and other effects. The CD-ROM (there's one for Macintosh and one for Windows) offers audiovisual tutorials that show you how to use each feature; you click the Practice button on the tutorial's interface to put what you've learned to use. This is a great way to learn a complicated software package such as Director.