is director the right choice?

[hilmar hermens]

Hi all.

We plan to produce interactive presentations for our sales (which they
also can give away on CD to customers) and throw away the old
powerpoints. At the same time we redesign our website.

The goal is to have the same look and feel (CI) in the presentations as
the website.
question:
Is there a quick way to "import html" in director?


Furthermore the sales should be able to add/change things for certain
customers without changing design elements (e.g. adding pages, images,
text, navigation elements) and without touching the director file.
question:
Is that possible with director or better using flash or something else?

Thanks in advance and best regards,

Hilmar.

[Doug Golenski]

And the answer is...it depends. Certainly any experienced Director
developer could use Director to do the things you are asking, with the
possible exception of your request about a "quick way to 'import html' in
director". You would need to explain your requirements more fully in order
to get a full answer...but in general Director is not very robust at
handling html, it is after all an authoring platform not a web browser. The
big caveat is that Director is a complex and powerful product and has a
steep learning curve. So if you have developers who are already experienced
in Flash, Jscript, VB, C or some other authoring system/language than you
would probably be better off going with those strengths...or sticking with
Powerpoint.
You might want to search the NG archives at:
[url]http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&group=macromedia[/url]
There have been many discussions about the differences between Director and
Flash and the suitability of each program for different tasks.

hth,
Doug
"hilmar hermens" <h.hermens@eprosoft.de> wrote in message
news:40093FBE.D130B749@eprosoft.de...

> Hi all.
>
> We plan to produce interactive presentations for our sales (which they
> also can give away on CD to customers) and throw away the old
> powerpoints. At the same time we redesign our website.
>
> The goal is to have the same look and feel (CI) in the presentations as
> the website.
> question:
> Is there a quick way to "import html" in director?
>
>
> Furthermore the sales should be able to add/change things for certain
> customers without changing design elements (e.g. adding pages, images,
> text, navigation elements) and without touching the director file.
> question:
> Is that possible with director or better using flash or something else?
>
> Thanks in advance and best regards,
>
> Hilmar.
>
>
>
>
>
>

[JB]

Director is I believe still the #1 interactive CD tool, it handles media
rich projects more easily than flash, particularly bitmap and video
intensive ones, this may be more meaningful when authoring for older
systems.

It's possible to place CD components on a web site in the form a
shockwave file, although the shockwave plugin can't be assumed to be in
place, like flash cam be.

Likewise, web site can br made flash intensive, with essentialy the
same file used as building blocks for the CD.

You can use linked external bitmap and video members in a director
project, allowing those elements to be altered without director.