Thought this was interesting, but a bit unrealistic. One of the original Macromedia Director guys wants his product and name back. While I'd like to see Director become a market player again, I don't think Adobe's going to be so keen on handing off one of Flash's biggest competitors so that it can be made into a good product again.

Director's been basically static for at least three major versions. While major new things were added (3D, &#106avascript), they were done as plugins. The development environment hasn't gone through any substantial updates in many years. Hence I can understand Shockwave zealots being upset seeing their product slowly wither and die in the shadow of Flash.<br><br>Shockwave's pretty durn nice and is certainly a better choice than Flash for many things, especially performance-demanding bitmap-based apps. And, unfortunately, that's why he probably won't get it back. If he's got a pile of money that can potentially offset the market share that Director will steal from Flash, he might be able to buy it. As it stands, he appears to want Director back gratis, and that won't happen.<br><br>If Director really needs a monster overhaul, then it's probably time to just write a replacement from the ground-up. We've learned a lot from ten years of browser plugin wars, and a "quantum leap better" replacement product is certainly do-able. My vote's that he takes his Director experience and uses it to develop a "Director Killer". Given that Director's likely going to be following the Pagemaker track to obscurity, it's ripe for replacement.<br><br><hr><br><br>On another note, I've officially declared Duck Tiles to be Beta One. If you want to help me test it, email me at john@thecodezone.com.<div> </div>