nightwares mini logoA brief introduction to Director

1. Your First Director Program

Traditionally, the first program written in a new language by a new programmer is a "Hello, World" program -- so it shall be with us.

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The primary difference between "Hello, World" in other languages and "Hello, World" in Director is that, once we're finished here, you'll know and have worked with virtually everything you need to go on to build some rather impressive programs (well, all right -- we won't have gone very far into scripting); with other languages you would have only begun to scratch the surface, and would probably be only a little wiser than you had been when you started.

We will begin by defining our objectives in a general fashion. This is a good habit to be in when developing a program; it's hard to know if you've reached your goal when you don't know what the goal actually is.


1. Introduction

2. Definition of Objectives

3. Specific Objectives

4. Stage Size

5. Stage Location

6. Setting the Stage's Color

7. Beginning to Enter Script

8. A bit More About the StartMovie() Handler

9. Entering Another Handler

10. A Break-down of the CheckColor() Handler

11. A Quick Test

12. Adding Text to the Stage

13. Preparing to Enter a Frame Script

14. Entering the Frame Script

15. Adding a Quit Button

16. The Progress so Far

17. Preparing to Add a Menu

18. Discussion of Menu Requirements

19. Preparing the Menu Storage Member

20. Entering Menu Functions for Macintosh

21. Entering Menu Functions for Windows

22. Efficientlly Handling Multiple Menus

23. Preparing to Insert the Menus Onscreen

24. Adding the Menu Installation Handler

25. Discussion of the Menu Installation Handler

26. Adding Code for an About Box

27. Review of the Scripts

28. Creating a Projector and Running it