Adobe unveils Director 11

Posted on 19 Feb 2008 at 12:17

Adobe has announced Director 11, the new version of its tools for building interavailable, multimedia applications, games and rich content.

Users can create a single piece of content that can then be simultaneously published for the web, CDs or DVD. Integration with Adobe's other applications means users can add Flash SWF files to Director projects, play them in Director and the free Shockwave Player, and edit them with Adobe Flash CS3 Professional.

In addition, Director 11 supports a wide range of third-party add-ons to localise applications through Unicode, create new levels of lifelike motion in games and simulations with the PhysX physics engine, and deploy enhanced text and native 3D rendering.

As well as the support for industry standard audio, video and image files, Director 11's new features include support for Flash 9 technology and bitmap filters to add characteristic such as shadowing or glow to text or images. The product offers language support with both JavaScript and Lingo, the native scripting language of Director, for programming in more than one language, as well as an improved script browser to save programming time.

"With the new Director 11, users can unleash their creative capabilities and broaden their market reach with less effort, producing more engaging multimedia applications in less time," said Naresh Gupta, senior vice president, Print and Publishing at Adobe. "This milestone release provides a strong and flexible authoring environment that perfectly complements Adobe's broad suite of authoring products, extending our customers' creative reach to interactive 3D animations and games."

Adobe Director 11 is expected to be available by the end of March 2008 at £705 (exc. VAT; £828.375 inc. VAT) for the full product and £209 (ex. VAT; £245.575 inc. VAT) for an upgrade from the previous three versions. Educators can purchase Director 11 for the upgrade price.

Adobe specifies support for OS X 10.4 Tiger, as well as Windows XP and Vista, but makes no mention of Leopard. The company has yet to clarify whether the newest version of OS X is supported.

For more information go to adobe.com/uk/director.

Author: Simon Aughton