Brian Underdahl is the well--known, best--selling author of over 70 computer books on a broad range of subjects. He has appeared on a number of TV shows including The Computer Chronicles and several TechTV programs. His books have won awards including an Award of Merit from the Northern California Technical Communications Competition and the Referenceware Excellence Award for best title in the Graphic Design and Multimedia category. He has been involved in personal computers from their beginning and has a background in electrical engineering. His last real job was as a Senior Programmer/Analyst for a large company where he worked hard to bring the power and freedom of PCs to the desktops. John R. Nyquist is Software Engineer--Developer, Advisory for StorageTek. As an award--winning designer/illustrator, John became obsessed with programming when he started using a Macintosh in 1987. He went on to program in C, Pascal, HyperTalk, Prograph CPX, and AppleScript before his introduction to Lingo in 1993. Since then, he has also worked with C++, Java, JavaScript, ActionScript, and C#. John worked as Senior Software Engineer/Project Lead for Ingenius, a Reuters/TCI company, on its award--winning, cable-- and Web--delivered educational software What On Earth. He led software engineering for CurrentWorks, Inc., developing entertaining educational software including QuizWorks, Bingo! With Mr. Vern, and Quiz 6 to encourage teamwork, group interaction, and cooperation. He is a Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP), a Sun Certified Instructor, and has worked as an instructor for Sun Microsystems teaching Java to programmers and nonprogrammers. He coauthored the previous editions of this book, Director 8 and Lingo Bible and Director 7 and Lingo Bible. John is technical editor for Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide, Advanced Lingo for Games, and The Director 6 Book. You can reach John at
[email protected], or you can visit his Web site at http://nyquist.net/. When he isn't programming, writing, or doing artwork, John spends his time enjoying life in Colorado with his wife, Laura, and their children, Alice and Richard. Robert Martin is the Director of Multimedia Services for Klein Buendel, a multimedia development company that specializes in designing interactive health communication programs. He is also an instructor in the multimedia design program at a local college. Rob has been using Macromedia Director for over 10 years to create almost every type of application imaginable, from a Web--based interactive presentation system to an award--winning daily multimedia news journal for kids. Rob began his career over 20 years ago, creating optical special effects for film and multi--image presentations. After 10 years in the dark and up to his elbows in photographic chemicals, he decided the time was right to jump into computer graphics. Not quite ready to leave film entirely, he spent a couple of years running a service bureau that specialized in high--resolution output of computer graphics to film. He went on to design one of the first Director--based interactive presentation systems for a large data--storage company. This experience introduced him to his next career path, interface design. He fine--tuned those skills as the creative director for a company that created educational multimedia applications for kids and teachers. When he's not teaching or creating multimedia projects for research scientists, Rob can be found floating the rivers of the American West in his raft, taking QuickTime VR Panoramas, and writing stories for his Web site, River Journals.
