Adobe Director 11 Options

[Nadine]

Hi Mark, i can appreciate your surprise. However, if you remember the climate the Director community was in, in 2007, there was a lot of doubt and we were unsure if/when D11 would actually come out.

We've noticed, from our own client base, that the number of Director developers are decreasing rapidely, people are moving on to, and developing with other tools and new technologies. As a leader in emerging technologies, even INM's partnership with Adobe extends beyond Director now, and into the RIA space. It's normal, we go with what our clients are asking for, but at the same time, we want to keep our ties with the Director community strong and we will continue supporting it.

All this to say, we needed to hear from you, and needed to know that it made sense for us to update our Xtras for D11. The confirmation came as you all began to vocalize your need for our Xtras, and therefore, we are upgrading our Xtras, starting with the most requested, INM Impressario.

I'm sure you can appreciate that we would need actual business cases and other such validations, before proceeding in the update of our Xtras.

Regards,
Nadine

[philippe rachas]

Impressario D11 is indeed essential !!
We have need it ASAP too.

[Nadine]

Thank you Phillippe. I would be interested to learn about your project to understand your needs.

In the meantime, I just wanted to let everyone know that we have tested INM Impressario 3 (the current version). If your development environment is PC-only, then INM Impressario 3 will work very well with Director 11.

With regards to INM VizionDB (version 4), the same applies, although we have done a little less testing that with INM Impressario, but so far, we have not run into any issues when developping on PC with INM VizionDB 4 and Director 11.

Regards,
Nadine

[philippe rachas]

Thank you Phillippe. I would be interested to learn about your project to understand your needs.

In the meantime, I just wanted to let everyone know that we have tested INM Impressario 3 (the current version). If your development environment is PC-only, then INM Impressario 3 will work very well with Director 11.

With regards to INM VizionDB (version 4), the same applies, although we have done a little less testing that with INM Impressario, but so far, we have not run into any issues when developping on PC with INM VizionDB 4 and Director 11.

Regards,
Nadine

hi,

my english level is maybe insufficient to well describe my project.
i'm an "old" french director user (first cdrom : 1995) because of xtras power and cross platform capacities.

i'm working on a Mac/PC Director app to deliver medical publications and tests (psychiatric evaluations) to a selection of doctors (about 25% of mac users). I work with a mac and or a pc (it depend on projects).

the only use of impressario in my case is to display/print PDF and retrieve bookmarks that are converted in links on the director stage.
this app have to update it content by connecting a web site, retrieve and download new PDF (and a short description list) each month. this web site is updated by administrator who insert new publications with a simple web form and 2 pdf upload fields (see the end of this post).
publications are uploaded in PDF format because this is the best and simplest way to send content/bookmarks in one way and to preserve display and print page settings.
so publications change every month and bookmarks are dynamically generated each time.

i'm still working with DMX2004 but PDF open/read on MACOSX with rosetta is really slow!!
Intel version of D11 is really, really faster on mac but why update Director if i can't update xtras (impressario, printomatic, dmtools, medialab, etc...) ? they are (for me) as important as Director itself !!

one more thing to finish (maybe for a next release) : I have a trouble with impressario use of bookmarks beacause an impressario display limitation of page jump.
if bookmark is at the end of a page, impressario do not allow to display "page jump" in the middle of the stage. so the page of the bookmark is well displayed but the bookmark stay at end, in the bottom of stage. so if another bookmark is on top of page you may think that your link is false or that is a bug. the only solution i've found at this time is to make a special "one continous page" version of each PDF to display bookmark jump correctly and a "standard" PDF version to print it. but what a work !!!!

best regards
philippe rachas

[David Giorgi]

Hello Nadine

I am also a veteran Director Developer since 1993. [Director 4: first cross platform version] There are some multimedia projects that can only be done in Director, please keep updating your products. With out your xtras some CD products would have never been brought to market.

We work on large scale educational and atlas projects for important publishing clients e.g. John Wiley & Sons and OUP [Oxford University Press]

Regards

David Giorgi
Annecy, France
www.chiefdreamer.com

[Nadine]

Thanks David for this information. Yes, our Xtras are very often used in educational projects, so it's great to know that this trend is still continuing. Which Xtras, specifically, do you need us to upgrade from your project?

Again, as a reminder to all, INM Impressario 3 works very well with Director 11, if your development environment is PC. We are actually running a few tests right now to see how reliable it is when deployed for Mac, I will let you know the results shortly.

Regards,
Nadine

[Fabian Estevez]

Hi. Just wanted to know if Impressario 3.01 is fully compatible with the new Adobe Director 11.
Thanks in advance.

[Nadine]

Hi Fabian, i moved your question to the main discussion. As i mention above in this conversation, INM Impressario 3 works perfectly well with Director 11, if you are developping on PC. In the meantime, we are currently working on an update to INM Impressario, for it to be fully compatible with Director 11.

As a follow up, we have completed our testing and confirm that both development AND deployment should be done on PC only, for INM Impressario 3 to work perfectly with Director 11. Anything else, at the moment, will not work.

Regards,
Nadine

[JACQUELINE PRECE...]

Hi,

I'd love to see securenet out for Dir 11, expecially the Mac (it seems quite stable on the PC). I could really use it right now (actually yesterday!!), not only for the proxy work-through but (is it just me?) it seems so much faster than the standard Director downloadNetThing etc.

We use Director for a number of projects, including bespoke presentation software. We are working on a secure export to web feature, which will need to work on the Mac. This would need securenet to work. We might scrap the Mac version if this Xtra should die...

Any (even rough) ideas on timescales?

Thanks, and keep Director alive!!

Alastair Paines
Signals

[Nadine]

Hi there, thanks for your comments and questions. I have cast your vote for INM SecureNet Xtra

Over the past few months, it has become clear to us that INM SecureNet Xtra is one of our top requested Xtras to update. So that's the good news

We have not started development on INM SecureNet Xtra, and will probably not start it until INM Impressario is released, so I don't have a timeline at this point.

However, regarding INM Impressario, there is no official date yet, but I will have an timeline for you all in about 2-3 weeks time.

So, definitely, for all you INM Impressario, INM SecureNet Xtra and INM V12/VizionDB users, stay tuned!

Regards,
Nadine

[François Hebert]

Hi.

Finally, will you upgrade INM v12?

I have a lot of project who wil/can require this upgrade.

Wanna know if you have take decision...

Thanks

Franck

[Nadine]

Frank,

I appreciate your question. We are logging the names of those who are still working on V12 and need an update. However, as you know V12 is now retired, and INM VizionDB is the new version. For now, the plan is still (as announced from the beginning), to update our flagship Xtras. Once we upgrade INM VizionDB, what will probably happen is that we will offer you an upgrade path directly from INM V12 Database version 3, as with any new product release.

This is by no means a closed topic, so a final decision with regards to the plans for INM V12 Database has not yet been reached.

I appreciate your concern and patience and your request has been loggued.

Regards,
Nadine

[SafariTECH]

VizionDB and SecureNet are the two we would be most interested in imediately. We develop government certification and cataloguing software with clinet/server components that requires using these tools and it is necessary to always be using the latest version of the development platform to make our clinets happy.

SecureNet gives us the security and proxy abilities that we require, in a nice little package and VizionDB gives us the DB abilities we require without the need to install special drivers on anyone's system (which the government loves).

[Nadine]

Thanks, you make a great case for both Xtras. I think you'll be pleased to know that both are in our plans to update. INM VizionDB, as our 2nd flagship Xtra, will follow after INM Impressario is released. Following that, INM SecureNet Xtra, being the most requested Xtra, will probably be the next to be updated.

For now, these plans are not yet confirmed, but as soon as i have more info, i will post it here first.


Regards,
Nadine

[matthias grund]

Hi Nadine,

thanks for your infos about INM´s xtra update-Plans for Director 11. Please let us know as soon as you have any vague timeline when and if an VisionDB/V12 Upgrade will be available (Still using V12 here because of its network/intranet features). We would appriciate it if you just could say something like "autumn 2008" or "last quarter of 2008" - so we can as soon as possible decide if we have to change and move with our products to another DB-xtra or not...
best regards and greetings from germany,
Matthias

[Nadine]

Hi Matthias, thanks for you questions and i've added your "vote" for INM VizionDB.

Here's how i see things progressing. By the beginning of June, I'll be able to let you know a release date for INM Impressario for Director 11. By July, I will be able to announce the next Xtra to be upgraded. As I may have mentioned previously, INM SecureNet Xtra and INM VizionDB are the most requested Xtras. I am not trying to remain mysterious on purpose, but I'm sure you can appreciate that, until we decide which is the next Xtra to be ugpraded, I can't give you a delivery timeline.

I will touch base with you all again beginning of June.

Regards,
Nadine

[tururut]

Hi Nadine.

For me could be fine to use the VizionDB. We updated our license from v12 to VizionDB but can not use it because of this two basic things:

INM VizionDB version 4.0 supports projects delivered on CD-ROM or installed to a hard drive. There is no support for accessing the database over a network or for client-server deployment at this time.

<LI>Multiple INM VizionDB databases can be open at the same time by a single Director movie. However, a INM VizionDB database can only be accessed by one INM VizionDB Database member (you can't have two open Director movies accessing the same INM VizionDB database).

If you don't plan to update v12 for Director 11 then I think that you must make available this two great features of v12 in vizionDB. If not, we will move also to another DB Xtra as you can understand.

Thanks and greatings because of your xtras.

[forumuser2250]

[quote name='Nadine' date='Apr 22 2008, 07:43 AM' post='10524']
Frank,

"We are logging the names of those who are still working on V12 and need an update..."

V12 had a great feature--the ability to define a custom string type, with custom ignore-characters, custom collation order, etc. Last summer I upgraded to VizionDB thinking it would also have those features, but they were gone, and VizionDB has been sitting on my computer, unused.

Another feature that is missing is Web server connectivity.

I don't see how VizionDB can be considered an upgrade for V12. The key features are gone.

[Nadine]

Hi All,

Just touching base to let you know that we're progressing very well on the development on INM Impressario for Director 11. So, at this stage, I have a question for all you Impressario users who are waiting so patiently for this new version.

Can you please chime in here and let me know:

• Who only uses INM Impressario for Windows, and has been working with Director 11 and the current INM Impressario v3 (since there are no compatibility issues)?
  s
• Who uses INM Impressario for both Windows and Mac, and has already upgraded (or is waiting to upgrade) to Director 11? If you're still waiting to ugprade to Director 11, what is stopping you from doing it now?
  s
• Who uses INM Impressario for Mac only? Have you already upgraded to Director 11 and are just waiting for the new version of Impressario? Or are you waiting to upgrade to Director 11, and if so, what are the factors stopping you?
  s
• Who uses older versions of INM Impressario (v1 or v2) and is just waiting to upgrade directly to the latest version? Or does the release of Director 11 not affect you at all, and you're happy with the way everything is right now?

I'm really interested to hear your thoughts, I haven't heard from many of our loyal INM Impressario users yet.

Regards,
Nadine

[Rick Curran]

Hi Nadine,
Director MX 2004 with Impressario v2 are the current versions of software I have. We don't do a great deal of Director development but when we do it is for both Mac and PC environments so support for both platforms is important.

I don't have a pressing need to upgrade to Director 11 due to no demand at work, however, if an appropriate project came up I would upgrade in order to have support for Intel Macs / Leopard and Windows Vista. Obviously compatible Xtras, Impressario in particular, will be required otherwise Director would be an unsuitable choice.

Overall I'm not impressed with the Director 11's features, the focus on game related tech rather than app development features combined with Adobe seeming reluctance to market it in any shape or form outside of its launch at GDC is rather concerning too. Much feedback for it has been negative, so other than purchasing to get support for Intel Macs & Vista there's nothing else compelling me to do so right now.

I hope that feedback is useful. The only other bit of feedback is that Impressario would be great if it had support for Javascript within PDF documents, right now I have to program a lot of interaction functions with PDF forms when using Impressario due to this. If you added that feature it would save a lot of time!

Thanks,

Rick Curran