Peter Becker wrote, in part: "Now if I could use Director (and I do) and have it output javascript or java beans now you'd be talking."
No news yet on this front, but there have been some necessary advances:
-- The "Dynamic HTML" in the IE4/Win browsers and the Netscape 4 browsers for Mac and Win will allow control over visual elements on the screen. These two early implementations, however, diverge from each other. Microsoft and Netscape are working with the World Wide Web Consortium to define a single standard for dynamic documents, which will help the job of web designers considerably.
The new DHTML Zone website is an excellent resource for the construction of dynamic documents which will work on both browsers, yet still be compatible with older browsers. It opened up this week, and I've learned a lot already from studying the various articles and demos. www.dhtmlzone.com is the spot.
-- Work is proceeding at Macromedia on Java-based playback. This is still a difficult area because a single set of Java classes would be interpreted by varying Java Virtual Machines, and even the best VMs do not yet offer the performance of native-code engines. The early Java-based Flash engine is still under development, and Jonathan Grayson of Macromedia recently posted to Shockwave and Director mailing lists that there will be some types of options for exporting Director work to Java soon, with details likely announced at the 8th Macromedia Developers Conference in San Francisco this October.
Non-plugin multimedia is still subject to the varying playback environments, but work is continuing on this front. From what I've seen myself, I believe the various technologies will continue to complement each other for the forseeable future.
Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Tech Support |
