Customer Rating: 
Summary: Obligatory book for Director's apprentices
Comment: When I decided to learn about Director I knew it would demand a lot of time and the best references I could get, as we all know Director is not for the faint of heart. Based on that, I got myself two DVD training courses and three books: The Director MX2004 Bible, the Visual Quickstart Guide and this Training from the Source. I can honestly say this one has the best didactic of all. It's the only one I was able to read from cover to cover, and we're talking about a 800+ pages book. The author takes you on a great ride with simple to complex examples and, in the end, you got yourself all you need to start working with Director basically and even intermediately. After that, it's all about in-depth research through more specific task oriented materials, forums, etc. Too bad the book wasn't updated to the MX 2004 version but unless you rather use Javascript than Lingo, you won't miss much.
In a short line, buy this one for sure and consider any other as a complement to your Director learning!
Customer Rating:
Summary: ok lets be serious
Comment: Okay i cant lie, this book helped me out during my noob years while learning Director. Its not for the hardcore users that already have a great and powerful background. If your new to director mx then this is for you no questions ask. It teachs all the basic stuff that you will need to understand how director works.
Customer Rating:
Summary: knowing about director lingo's
Comment: which book can i refer to learn lingos from the scratch
do i get a book with tutorials samples
Customer Rating:
Summary: Director
Comment: I found this book to be exactly what I needed to get started with Director. I had very little background with flash/shockwave, etc, and this book helped me get the start I needed. The lessons were easy to follow with clear and concise directions. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to learn Director!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Plenty of information but could be better organised
Comment: There is a lot of information on Director here, but rather less on Lingo than the title suggests. The CD accompanying the book has several 'bonus' chapters, a feature which I thoroughly dislike. Files for the various projects are also on the CD - a feature I do like rather than looking up a website.The book is packed with Director tips and techniques and is as good as is available for Director. However, despite all this information, no coherent design philosophy is put forward in the book to help developers. This is a definite shortcoming. Set against that, the projects are interesting in the main, so you can extrapolate. The section on video control in Lingo is very interesting but too short to get into more meaty topics. Bizarrely the chapter on Director and the web is on the CD. The chapter on databases and lists is useful, but limited, and will appeal to programmers in particular. There is a chapter on animation using an 'arm' which is too long winded and really could do with a technical tweaking. The embeddability of 3D models is covered in a hit and miss fashion. For instance the chapter on Director 3D is on the CD.
I am reasonably positive about this book but I got the feeling that the author was upgrading an earlier version. From an educational perspective, the organisation of chapters and their goals is not ideal. However, there are really very few good texts on Macromedia products around. This is a very reasonable and sustained effort. At some stage it would be very useful if Macromedia actually listened to what their customers are looking for in instruction manuals. Until then, this type of book will dominate the market. Competent but not great.
