Adobe announces the Director 11 multimedia development environment

Text: Adobe has announced an update to its authoring system for interactive internet, CD and DVD content. The company claims Director 11 will allow intuitive creation of advanced interactive applications, games, E-learning courses and simulation systems by animators and developers.

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Applications created with Director can be published on the web, on CDs/DVDs and as desktop applications, and played using Adobe Shockwave Player. SWF files originating from Flash can be added to Director projects, run in Director and Shockwave and, according to Adobe, processed in Flash CS3 with no problems. Applications can be localised using Unicode, while the inclusion of the Ageia PhysX engine should ensure physically correct movements, and direct 3D rendering with DirectX9 support for the latest graphics.

Adobe says that Director 11 supports more than forty audio, video and graphics formats, including its own Flash 9. Adobe is also reported to have improved the text engine. A "bitmap filter" is meant to make it easier to obtain better shading and illumination of text and images. As well as Lingo, Adobe's own scripting language, Director also supports JavaScript. An extended script browser is claimed to shorten programming times by providing an option to include code snippets using Drag and Drop.

The English-language version of Adobe Director 11 will probably appear in late May, while Adobe expects to start supplying international versions in German, French and Japanese in June. Director 11 costs almost €1200, and an upgrade from a previous version is around €350. Schoolchildren, students and teachers can get the full version of Director 11 for the discounted price.

Director 11 requires Windows XP (SP2), Windows Vista or Mac OS X Version 10.4 (Intel). Shockwave also runs on the PowerPC version of Mac OS X 10.4.

(jbe)