Flash 8 Xtra for Director MX 2004
Friday, 24 March 2006Macromedia have released an update to Director MX 2004, adding Flash Player 8 support to the Flash Xtra. This means that all of the new expressive features of the Flash Player 8 release - video alpha masks, filters, PNG loading, etc - can now be used in a Flash movie hosted in a Director project.
The update does not include support for the ExternalInterface API, which is unfortunate because communication between Flash and Director is flaky at best. The new ExternalInterface API was designed to allow Flash and its host application to communicate easily in a synchronous way, and I can’t help but think that Adobe has missed a trick by not including support for this as part of the update. Instead we’re stuck with trapping the calls to getURL, decoding the data manually and then returning data by calling a Flash function on the root timeline. Not satisfactory.
Also concerning is the lack of V2 component support as reported in the Flash 8 Asset Xtra Documentation Addendum. I can’t see what would make the V2 components incompatible with Director, but this is a serious barrier to building a Director shell to host cross-platform Flash applications. The likes of Zinc and mProjector have limited feature sets, whereas Director has a long list of Xtras that can be used to give your application extra functionality. However, without support for the V2 components it’ll be hard to develop Director-hosted Flash applications.
All in all this is a good release, but I think Adobe could and should have gone further. This was an ideal opportunity to support all the functionality that Flash 8 has to offer, and only supporting a subset of those is a little disappointing.
Thank you for your blog! At this writing, 12 days ago
Kade M | Sunday, 26 March 2006 | 9:51 amThank you for your blog!
At this writing, 12 days ago Macromedia released this update - why have they not spread the word? Ever since MAX 2005, I’ve been asking them (in a live session, then e-mailed with no reply) for them about Director being able to use Flash 8 video - with no response (for a $1000 program that I’ve paid about $3000 for including upgrades). Getting near completion of a project, I did a google about the problem, found your site, then downloaded the updates.
Considering that they took all the money for the programs, fixed “my” problem and didn’t let me know, I would like to give you a BIG THANKS for posting about this update. I haven’t tried it yet, but appreciate your advice!
Sincerely,
Kade
Kade: It does seem to have been a very low
Steve | Sunday, 26 March 2006 | 12:13 pmKade: It does seem to have been a very low key update from Adobe; I’m not sure why they haven’t made more noise about this as it’s something a lot of people have been waiting for.
Anyway, glad to have been of service
Hi, Besides my own "barnklad" and "Ironklad" posts on the
Steve K | Monday, 27 March 2006 | 4:30 pmHi,
Besides my own “barnklad” and “Ironklad” posts on the Director forums and in Tom Higgins’ blog, yours is the only place on the web I’ve found that has expressed concern about the new Flash 8 Asset Xtra’s purported lack of support for Flash v2 components. Thanks for sharing my pain!
Here’s the good news: I’ve got a Director projector running in Windows that contains both Guy Watson’s free Flash 8 Lake Effect swf and a second Flash 8 SWF containing a lot of AS2 scripting that is instantiating v2 components at runtime. They work together in the same Director MX 2004 projector, using the new Flash 8 Asset Xtra. I didn’t have to do anything terribly fancy to achieve this.
So while I am less concerned at this point for my own app, I am still a bit curious as to what the Flash 8 Asset Xtra Documentation Addendum means exactly with its blanket claim that v2 components are unsupported by the new Xtra.
Steve: Right, that is good news - thanks for sharing.
Steve | Monday, 27 March 2006 | 4:52 pmSteve: Right, that is good news - thanks for sharing. Maybe what they mean by ‘unsupported’ is actually ‘untested, and we won’t give any support if it doesn’t work’???
For us right now the lack of Externalnterface support is more important.
I use director primarily for 3d and flash 8 video
tyree | Sunday, 30 April 2006 | 2:28 amI use director primarily for 3d and flash 8 video has an alpha channel which I have use for. my question is do you know anyway to play a swf when it is used as a texture
only the first frame shows
hai sir i create a presentation using directormx2004 and i want
lijukarolil | Monday, 29 May 2006 | 2:00 pmhai sir
i create a presentation using directormx2004 and i want to publish as swf instead of projector. how it is possible?
in 1024X768 resolution that movie loss clarity when i stretch in to full screen?
pls reply me if you have any solution
I recently made a prepurchase call to adobe regarding director
banneker | Monday, 14 August 2006 | 1:58 amI recently made a prepurchase call to adobe regarding director mx 2004. I used version 7 in 1999 and didn’t get to far. Apparently they fired all of the Macromedia staff and are trying to decide whether or not to continue working on the current version next year. According to the sale rep they have done nothing on the project. Does anyone know where the macromedia people have gone to? It’s a toss up between this and visual studio for me.
I suspect the reason that this upgrade was low key,
scorche | Thursday, 21 September 2006 | 4:51 pmI suspect the reason that this upgrade was low key, is that even thogh it did allow Flash8 functions to be used in older director software, if they admitted this too openly it might impact sales of the new Director package. Just a guess though. Nevertheless I’m vary happy that there is support for flash8 in Director MX, it’s a huge weight off my shoulders. Hopefully there will be no issues.
I have tried using Flash Asset xtra for Director 2004.
Ashish | Friday, 15 December 2006 | 7:22 amI have tried using Flash Asset xtra for Director 2004. When I select “Download if needed” from Movie Xtras, it does not download. Seems the URL that is given does not work.
Can someone please help?
How could I use flash 8's swf file with "director
preeti | Friday, 29 December 2006 | 8:25 amHow could I use flash 8’s swf file with “director mx 10″.
when I am using the default method (import swf in director cast)is does play. Screen got blank. when i calling external *.dxr file which containg swf file.
How could I use flash 8’s swf file with “director
preeti | Friday, 29 December 2006 | 8:26 amHow could I use flash 8’s swf file with “director mx 10″.
when I am using the default method (import swf in director cast)is doesnot play. Screen got blank. when i calling external *.dxr file which containg swf file.
How could I use flash 8’s swf file with “director
preeti | Friday, 29 December 2006 | 8:29 amHow could I use flash 8’s swf file with “director mx 10″.
when I am using the default method (import swf in director cast)is doesnot play. Screen got blank. when i calling external *.dxr file which containg swf file.
Can someone please help?
Is there any “xtra” or any player for support flash 8 swf ?
Type your comment here.
super | Thursday, 25 January 2007 | 5:17 amType your comment here.
I am a content developer using macromedia Director MX. I
Rizwan | Wednesday, 03 October 2007 | 9:13 amI am a content developer using macromedia Director MX. I am unable to link an exe file or installation file to director movie. If I click a button, should start an installation of a software like quick time.
Please assist me in this matter. or if there is any xtra available for that i will purchase it.
Thank you
Rizwan