The future of Director
Developer Dispatch had a post about the future of Director post Adobe acquisition. Not much has been speculated about this product over the last couple of days, and I was wondering what other’s thoughts were.
I’m wondering myself what will become of it. Actually, I’ve wondered what would become of it while in Macromedia’s hands for some time. I know that there are two separate uses for Flash and Director, especially when focused on the web and Flash Player’s leaner, faster footprint as opposed to Shockwave player, but I’m wondering why both products continue to exist.
For instance, I use Director very little anymore. I use it to wrap Flash work that I’ve done into a projector that can run full screen without a toolbar and with a black background. I’ve used Director with BuddyAPI in the past to call some system functions, but I’ve never utilized Director to the full extent of what it can do, and probably never will, since that’s not really what I do. I’m more of a designer than a developer. In the end, MDM’s Flash Studio Pro probably would have been a better (and cheaper) purchase here at work, but I wasn’t aware of it when we were outfitting the interactive department, so I went with what I was familiar with.
However, I’m wondering why lots of the features that make Director what it is couldn’t just be rolled into Flash and call it a day. Why couldn’t we just write an #include to extend Flash with some of the heavier interactive features that Director has, so that they are only compiled in when needed?
And, perhaps that’s what we might see in the future after the acquisition.
Thoughts?