Jason MacDonald

Macromedia Director is best known for building games, 3D simulations, and animations. What a lot of developers probably don't realize is that Director can also be used to build elaborate applications, and even more so now with the release of Director MX 2004, which supports ECMAScript-compliant JavaScript syntax. Although Director is seldom mentioned as a serious contender in the applications development arena, it may very well be the best-kept secret in town! This article discusses what an application is by today's standards, and why applications are still required when everything else seems to be moving to the Web. We then introduce Director and show how it can be used as a great application development tool. In order to do so, we break an application down into its three main components - user interface, data management, and logic - and we explore how Director ca... (more)