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Differences between Flash and Director
- Thread starter gcastillo
- Start date
Well,
I use both director and flash for all kinds of things. Before the advent of Flash 5, I felt (perhaps wrongly) that Director could build much more interactive experiences on the web. But with Flash 5s new action scripting capabilities and abilities to parse xml and that kind of stuff, you can pull a lot of tricks out of flash. The advantage to using flash for web is that the files are smaller than shockwave files, and therefore speedier loading times occur. But don't write Director off for web based applications.
I use Director for Cd-rom and .exe applications. You can do this in flash, too, but I find the sky to be the limit with what you can actually achieve in Director. It just usually isn't feasible to put it on the web (though that's not always the case). Not to mention Director is capable of running stuff off of hardware and Flash is not (though Flash can be rigged to print from a web page). Anyhow, I hope this helps. See if you can get a copy of the Computer Arts Special Flash and Shockwave. This explains things much better.
Blended
I use both director and flash for all kinds of things. Before the advent of Flash 5, I felt (perhaps wrongly) that Director could build much more interactive experiences on the web. But with Flash 5s new action scripting capabilities and abilities to parse xml and that kind of stuff, you can pull a lot of tricks out of flash. The advantage to using flash for web is that the files are smaller than shockwave files, and therefore speedier loading times occur. But don't write Director off for web based applications.
I use Director for Cd-rom and .exe applications. You can do this in flash, too, but I find the sky to be the limit with what you can actually achieve in Director. It just usually isn't feasible to put it on the web (though that's not always the case). Not to mention Director is capable of running stuff off of hardware and Flash is not (though Flash can be rigged to print from a web page). Anyhow, I hope this helps. See if you can get a copy of the Computer Arts Special Flash and Shockwave. This explains things much better.
Blended
Horrid
Programmer
- May 20, 1999
- 373
actually shockwave is a hybrid of vector and bitmap and can do both. It has a massively more powerfull scripting language and can almost be called a programming language (almost). Flash files can be imbedded into shockwave files to get the nice vector features of flash with the power of shockwave. Shockwave can produce much more impressive effects but you generally pay for this in file size.
Flash is the best option of basic buttons, interfaces and basic games but if you want to create dynamic games (yes you can make games with flash but nothing near as cool as you can with shockwave) or multiuser environments shockwave is the way to go.
Other cool thing about shockwave is you can manipulate bitmaps directly with code, including the shape of vectors.
All that said 95% of people are better off with Flash, its is a very cool package and with version 5 finally has a semi decent programming environment. Unless you want to really get stuck into ligo programming the power of shockwave wont ever get touched.
Flash is the best option of basic buttons, interfaces and basic games but if you want to create dynamic games (yes you can make games with flash but nothing near as cool as you can with shockwave) or multiuser environments shockwave is the way to go.
Other cool thing about shockwave is you can manipulate bitmaps directly with code, including the shape of vectors.
All that said 95% of people are better off with Flash, its is a very cool package and with version 5 finally has a semi decent programming environment. Unless you want to really get stuck into ligo programming the power of shockwave wont ever get touched.
Horrid is absolutely correct. Before Flash 5 Director was it. For the most part, I recommend a little combination of Shockwave and Flash for web sites (yes, it can be done if you know your html--just use frames). Without a doubt Shockwave is a masterpiece. Just learn your Lingo!
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