Digital arts, multimedia and Web publishing software firm Macromedia Inc says it has addressed users’ requirements with the launch of Director 5, the latest version of its multimedia and Internet authoring tool. The San Francisco, California-based company says Director 5 provides greater speed and dozens of new features to more than 300,000 Director developers. Director 5 complies with the company’s author once, play anywhere strategy and runs on either Mac or Windows systems on both 68000 and PowerPC on the Mac and under Windows95, Windows NT and 3.1. New features of Director 5 include enhanced performance of the Lingo scripting language. The company claims 50% to 300% faster Lingo execution and says Director 5 uses the power of native 32-bit Windows 95 and NT as well as Mac OS. Multiple internal and external Cast files enable developers to create templates and change content or create content libraries, for example when working on multi-language versions. Macromedia has also listened to users’ pleas to enhance text formatting features and Director 5 supports Rich Text File import, has kerning and leading facility and automatic anti-aliasing features, which enables users to remove edge bleeding on text, on the fly. In addition, there are more than 100 new and updated Lingo scripting language commands and a new debug facility for Lingo developers. Director 5 also supports Object Linking & Embedding and has a pre-load movies option which eliminates play-back delay. The company actively encourages third party developers to write Macromedia Xtras using its open architecture, and says there are now hundreds of specialized capabilities and extended functionality available for Director. As well as offering individual tools such as Director, Macromedia also bundles its software to offer a complete multimedia environment. It is launching Multimedia Studio 2, which includes Director 5, Macromedia xRes 2.0 (CI No 2,845), Extreme 3D and SoundEdit 16. Both Director 5 and Multimedia Studio 2 will ship at the end of the month and the recommended retail price will be incentive for buyers to opt for the full Multimedia Studio suite, instead of the stand-alone Director. Director is $850 and Multimedia Studio is on special promotion until September at $999. Existing Director users can upgrade to Director 5 for $399 or the full Studio for $499.
