In the spirit of the four year hiatus between versions (and accompanying uncertainty as to the dead/not dead status of the product), it's only fitting I let almost a year roll by between the announcement/release of Director 11 and finally getting around to reviewing it. In any event, Director is back from its long slumber, so let's take a look at what the eleventh release of the former king of the multimedia hill brings to the table.

Naturally, questions are going to be raised when any software product takes a four-year hiatus, especially when the program in question happens to be a stalwart multimedia veteran like Director, the eleventh version of which was finally released several months back. Enter Adobe's Director Evangelist, Allen Partridge. Allen started out in design, but eventually dove headfirst into Director programming, giving him a unique perspective of the product from several different angles. Allen was kind enough to sit down recently for a candid discussion on where Director has been, is now, and where it may be going.

Believe it or not, there are still folks out there using Director for multimedia authoring, even as Adobe pushes the Flash platform ever forward and preps AIR as the technology of choice for desktop-based applications. And while it's been more than a year of silence since the "Director is not dead" proclamation was issued by Adobe's former Director Product Manager, in the interest of keeping the fires lit, here's a tidbit for how to make Director projectors (with the help of the essential Buddy API Xtra) recognize whether they're running on an Intel or a PowerPC-based Mac.