This book is extremely thin on the ground, and won't teach you anything particularly useful. I first bought this book around two years ago when I first started developing in Director professionaly. I used it for about two weeks, decided it was nothing like as detailed as I needed and ditched it. Now I use Catanese's book, the native Director help function, and the Dir-3D mailing list (which is a fantastic resource). (David Mennenoh himself is a member of this list and posts questions with surprising regularity)

I just bought this book in Sydney.Overall it's a good book but when I tried to access its URL for the training material,it gave nothing.So can anybody inform me the newest URL for Mr. Mennenoh's Director book?

Not very much 3D content. But none of Dir-books are dedicated to 3D, and that would be somthing what I need.. Otherwise quite good and easy to follow.

As a multi-media and webdesign student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, I've been required to learn many challenging programs and read several multi-media books as well for reference. This book was the required text for our Director Classes and I really would like to know why.

The book has a lot of useful information, but if a beginner was using this, they would be very confused and discouraged. The book jumps right into director with VERY little explaining of what items in the program are and what they do. The examples shown in this book start out informative, but then they go off into rambling tangents that have nothing to do with what the example is trying to show, and then try to give an example about whatever the author decieded to throw into the current example. The author makes it alot more confusing then it really needs to be, jumping back and forth the way he does.

There aren't as many pictures in this book as I would think would be needed to better show the examples. I suppose I would just prefer pictures to go along with the examples then a lengthly explanation that really doesn't make all that much sense in the first place.

I have attempted to consult this book many times through the index looking for a particular effect to use, only to be directed to a page that has nothing to do with what i was looking for. 3/4 of the class had the same problem as I did, and many simply stopped using the book as I did.

In short, if you are just starting out on Director, (which can be a very complicated program especially if you have never used it before), then this is not the book to go with like our class had to. If you are an experienced user and know what everything in the program is, then possibly this book could be for you, but it isn't for me. I would personally much rather have started with a visual quickstart guide, but I don't believe they have one published for Director 8.5 yet. I am glad I was able to get this book for only [money] on ebay, and I think I understand now why it was so [unexpensive].

A fantastic book! There's so much in here, it should probably be in widescreen. There are some great examples of code and Dave guides you through coding with the highest degree of structure and logic. If you're starting out in Shockwave 3d, it may not be the best option since it is a 'wider' book that doesn't just focus on one particular topic. It does, however, have some excellent code to refer to and serves as a great reference book for the more advanced Lingo-ist. The source files are up on Dave's site and they are all downloadable and very useful to have on your hard drive.

Whilst the book covers a wide range of topics and acts as a fantastic resource for the advanced programmer, there is still enough here for the beginner to get going. If you are just starting out with Director, buy this book and the Visual Quickstart Guide for Director and you'd have everything you need to be a Shockwave programmer. If you have been around a while, buy this book for reference and some REALLY helpful Lingo tips.

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