graphics and multimedia

which book can i refer to learn lingos from the scratch
do i get a book with tutorials samples

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!

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.