Lingo 2 Tutorial: Introduction to Navigation with Lingo

File "basic.dir"

Save this file onto your hard drive to use it as a starting point for this tutorial.

Take a look at the slides describing visually how the different navigation techniques can be accomplished in Director.

File "linear.dir"

contains six commandments that will be used as screens for navigation. You will use it as a starting point. It contains in addition a title page as a first cast member. The seven members are placed in different channels and play slowly linearly, one frame per second. If you want to give some control to the user on when to move on to the next commandment, you can insert timing commands in the Tempo channel to proceed only after a click.

has a little interactivity; you have to click the mouse to advance the slide show, and you always have the opportunity to go back to the title page. This is done through the go to command that is placed in the sprite. Create a marker "s" on the initial frame and go to it by typing: go to frame "s"
Note: This is written in the old syntax of Lingo. In the new syntax you would write _movie.go("title")
As you can see, the problem is trying to create a 2D structure out of Director's 1D score.

gives the impression that there is not much movement in the user experience. The center of the screen changes, but the navigational aids (the buttons in this case) stay in the same place. The users feel that they can access any part of the application at the click of a button. The movie's progression is being stopped through frame script "go to the frame" (the "car's breaks") that is shown in the frame script channel (aka, the "score script"). No need of sprite scripts and movie scripts yet. Note: Again, this is written in the old syntax of Lingo. In the new syntax you would write _movie.go(_movie.frame)

File "network.dir"

allows movement between commandments on demand. You are always presented with a menu of commandments and you can bring up to the screen each one on demand. Notice that even this is a network, it actually behaves as the "frame" navigation technique.

tries to implement the tree of screens shown in cast member "tree" (and in the beginning of the movie). The first level is implemented through markers. The three cast members that send the playback head to three different frames, do it through cast member scripts. Notice that the second set of branches of the tree is not implemented in this file. How would you implement it?