Citation
Lei, P.P. and Taleb, M. (1998), "Lingo (tm) and Shockwave(tm) Sourcebook: A Complete Guide to Developing Multimedia for the Web and CD-ROMs", Internet Research, Vol. 8 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.1998.17208aaf.008
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1998, MCB UP Limited
Lingo (tm) and Shockwave(tm) Sourcebook: A Complete Guide to Developing Multimedia for the Web and CD-ROMs
Lingo (tm) and Shockwave(tm) Sourcebook: A Complete Guide to Developing Multimedia for the Web and CD-ROMs
Shah, V. and Musser, J. (1997) Wiley Computer Publishing, New York, NY, 497 p. with CD. ISBN 0-471-16893-9. US $39.95, Canada $55.95. Available: J Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10158-0012. Tel: 1-800-225-5945 (toll free in the US), 1-212-850-6000; Fax: 1-908-302-2300; http://www.wiley.com
Of the books published on the topic of Shockwave, Shah and Musser present readers with an excellent basic guide on Macromedia Director and its scripting language (Lingo) on both the Macintosh and the MS Windows environments. This book is the collaborative work of experienced multimedia developers who have put their how-to knowledge in simple words to assist interested readers in creating animation for the WWW and on CD-ROMs by using the basics of Macromedia Director and the Lingo programming language.
It is delightful to note that this book is organised in a fun and artistic way and is easy to read. The first five chapters set the stage for Lingo. Chapters 6-8 explains Quicktime Player and tricks, and the next three chapters introduce Shockwave. The authors devote two chapters (10 and 11) to creating Shockwave movies for the WWW including creating and programming streaming audio files. The final chapter discusses how to publish multimedia application on CD-ROMs and covers issues such as intellectual property protection, cross-platform utilisation (MAC, Windows 3.1, 95, and Windows NT) and compatibility. The tips and tricks chapter summaries make the book invaluable to nonprogrammers. However, this book is not a "command" reference manual. The product manual must be consulted for a deeper knowledge of the programming language. Other newer multimedia tools for adding efficient vector-based animations to Web sites are not discussed.
An extra bonus with this book is a CD-ROM which contains all the completed projects from the book, Director movies, artwork, audio, and Quicktime video samples for reference.
In sum, this source book is surprisingly refreshing and pleasant to read. We recommend this step by step guide book as a must purchase for any library which offers multimedia production reference resources for their customers.
Polin P. LeiInformation Librarian, Arizona Health Sciences Library, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724 polin@u.arizona.edu
and
Mohamed TalebInformation Systems Librarian, University of Arizona Library, Tucson AZ, 85721 mtaleb@bird.library.arizona.edu