Macromedia Inc is promising to add Java support to its widely used Director multimedia authoring tool as part of its universal media initiative. The new move will enable Director users to have the option of displaying Director movies not only on native playback engines such as Macromedia’s own Director and ShockWave players, but also to use Java-enabled browsers and, further out, those supporting Dynamic HTML. The option will be supported via extra export facilities that convert Director’s Lingo scripting language into Java. Only a subset of Director functionality will be offered, as the two languages don’t directly map, and functionality will be restricted by whatever the Java Virtual Machine can support. The facility will automatically strip away unused functionality in order to minimize code size. The move takes Director in the direction of Java authoring tools, and is an attempt to broaden the product’s appeal beyond its current user base of multimedia professionals. It will shortly begin beta testing. The release schedule for Dynamic HTML support, already offered in Macromedia’s Dreamweaver product, has yet to be decided.
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