(from Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio: The Complete Reference, by David Mennenoh)
See Macromedia Director 8.5 Help system section "What's new in Director 8.5"
(also from Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio: The Complete Reference, by David Mennenoh)
The term "sprite" has been used in the video game industry as long as video games have existed. Traditionally, "sprite" was used to refer to a small, elusive, supernatural being --an elf or a pixie (remember Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"). Game programmers began using the term "sprite" way back in the early '70s when first arcade video games began to appear. A "sprite" in the gaming sense was a small bitmap images that the processor could move around quickly. In Director the term "sprite" refers to any piece of media (not just a bitmap) that shows up on the stage -- usually a small and elusive piece of the movie (in that many only exist in a frame or due to some condition).
Tool palette--see handout defining each of the tools
Inspectors--help in viewing and editing movie. We've seen the Property inspector, but there's also a text inspector, a memory inspector and a behavior inspector. We'll discuss the memory inspector when we get to debugging.
Macromedia Director® is software that you use to make more software. Director® is an integrated development environment (IDE), which is defined as "a system for supporting the process of writing software which includes syntax-directed editor, graphical tools for program entry, and integrated support for compiling and running the program and relating compiling errors back to the source." (from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, http://www.foldoc.org, Editor Denis Howe) You will see all of these tools as you get deeper into programming in Director.
Director is a popular multimedia authoring package because its framework allows for developers to easily add functionality to the program by creating Xtras for it with Director's Software Development Kit (SDK). These extras are usually written in C, and introduce features to Director® that Macromedia hadn't yet imagined.
"Lingo" is the name of the programming language used to manipulate objects in the Director® environment. Lingo was invented by John Henry Thompson in 1990. It was originally named "Chatter Box", and was used to drive interactive art pieces. Renamed "Lingo," the programming language was first added to Director® in version 2.0.
The vocabulary for Lingo is actually very small. Before Director 8.5 added 3D functionality, there were only a couple hundred words and 42 handlers in Lingo; the 3D functionality almost doubled the vocabulary and added many new handlers. If you look in the index of the help section on Lingo, you'll see that the 3D Lingo has it's own section (keeping the basic Lingo users from getting too overwhelmed in "our" help section).
Despite its small vocabulary, Lingo is now a very powerful language
Lingo changes constantly; old syntax and commands are retired and new ones are added. The earliest versions of Lingo used as syntax known as vebose (wordy). It was a third generation programming language at its "best"--using commands very close to the way we would write or talk. It was very readable, but as the language became more powerful, it was not very productive for the cadre of "real" programmers to use. Beginning with Director 7, Lingo started using a syntax common to other object oriented programming languages called "dot syntax." We will use dot syntax in this class since it is now the standard, and the old syntax will continue to be retired.
Exampes:
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Verbose (old) Lingo
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Dot syntax (new) Lingo
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| set the visible of sprite 1 = 0 | sprite(1).visible = 0 |
| set myText = the text of member "input" | myText = member("input").text |
| set the forecolor of sprite (the spriteNum of me) = random(255) | sprite(spriteNum).forecolor = random(255) |
Class handout on tool palette, Macromedia Director 8.5 Help system, Chapter 1 of Director 8 Demystified.