Navigation and User Interaction

Adding interactivity lets you involve your audience in your Macromedia Director MX 2004 movies. Using the keyboard, the mouse, or both, your audience can download content from the Internet, jump to different parts of movies, enter information, move objects, click buttons, and perform many other interactive operations.

Unless made to do otherwise, a movie plays through every frame in the Score from start to finish. Behaviors and Lingo or JavaScript syntax script can make the movie jump to a different frame, movie, or URL when a specified event occurs. With script, you can include simple navigation instructions as part of more complex handlers; you can also place navigation code in movie scripts and scripts that are attached to cast members such as buttons.

There are several other interactive features that you can add to your movie:

Draggable sprites give your audience the ability to move sprites anywhere on the Stage. You can also create boundaries beyond which sprites cannot move.
Editable fields are fields in which your audience can enter or edit information.
Rollovers make certain sprites change in appearance when the mouse pointer passes over them, even if the user has not clicked the mouse. Using rollovers is an excellent way to give your audience feedback based on their actions.
The mouse pointer (that is, the cursor) can be changed based on criteria you select. Using script, you can provide animated cursors or specify one of the standard cursors or a bitmap cast member as a cursor image. For more information, see the Scripting Reference topics in the Director Help Panel.
Push buttons, radio buttons, and check boxes provide an easy to way to quickly create user interfaces for forms or applications.

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