While this entire segment of the development market is essentially deprecated as a result of practically universal web access at all times and in all places, I'd be remiss if I were to not mention it at all, as so much of my development/programming experience was within this realm.
Starting in 1995 with Director 3 scripted in Lingo, I began as a freelance programmer working on sales and marketing presentations for clients in the pharmaceutical, telecomm, and financial sectors. In those days I worked on a MAC, but developed for cross-platform distribution on CD-ROM. Windows 95 was the new replacement for windows 3.1, and 64MBs of RAM and 66MB hard drives were above average. Optimizing Director's resource consumption was as important as creating a user experience without glitches, flashes, flickers, redraws, or shifting pixels. I became adept at using Debabelizer, used to reduce graphics to 8-bit by creating CLUTs (color look up tables) which were custom defined color palettes optimized to the majority of graphics in the project. Memory management and overall disc space requirements were also important. These presentations were output from Director as application (.exe) files with accompanying folder structures delivered on CD-ROM, some with installers. I wore many hats – programmer, animator, graphic production artist, audio editor, video editor, project manager, IT consultant, and anything else for which there was no one on staff to do. I learned the overall business very well, focusing on flawless work as well as bottom-line profit.
Over the years, even though computer capabilities grew, managing Director's resource consumption remained a priority. My Lingo (and overall programming) skills also grew, resulting in efficient, error-free code which was generalized and reusable. My end-client base had also become more corporate and Windows-only playback was the requirement. I switched to developing on a PC. The last version of Director I used regularly was MX2004.
Director, and especially Lingo (which is derived from the same parent language as ActionScript and JavaScript) is capable of nearly anything one might desire in a desktop application. It's that "anything is possible" aspect which made Director so appropriate for so many business sectors. In addition to pharmaceutical, telecomm, and financial sectors, I have experience in education, entertainment, communications/advertising, fashion, and other sectors as well. I completed 100+ projects, all within schedule and within budget.
In addition to countless presentation projects, I've programmed games and quizzes, some with complex scoring models and the ability to send results to appropriate people; live (projected) presentations for corporate/industry meetings; kiosks; and screensavers. Additional functionality includes saving user input, tracking, report generation, error checking, and system interaction for a variety of functions.
Other software used for many years in conjunction with Director: Photoshop, SoundEdit16, SoundForge, Premiere, Acrobat, Flash, the usual Office apps, Filezilla, and others.
When Adobe bought Macromedia, rumour indicated that Adobe would no longer support Director, and that Flash would continue to develop, taking Director's place. Many companies immediately dropped the use of Director, fearing its imminent demise, and moved on to Flash and/or web strategies. The Director market evaporated. However, the rumours were false, as Adobe did, after some time, make public its commitment to Director and went on to release two new major versions – 11 and 12, the last coming in 2013. And it does appear to be the last.
From Director, I moved on to Flash development – the logical successor to Director.