iShell is a traditional multimedia authoring environment, similar in many ways to

Macromedia Director Adobe Director (formerly Macromedia Director, MacroMind Director, and MacroMind VideoWorks) was a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and managed by Adobe Systems until its discontinuation. Director was the primary edi ...

. A descendant of the

Apple Media Tool The Apple Media Tool was a multimedia authoring tool and associated programming environment sold by Apple in the late 1990s. It was primarily aimed at producing multimedia presentations for distribution on CD-ROM and was aimed at graphic designer ...

, iShell is designed to be easy to use, but powerful enough to grow as a user's skill set increases. iShell was first released by Tribeworks in 1999. In July 2006
tribalmedia
acquired all rights to iShell. The current version of iShell is 4.5r7. iShell uses the

Key Key or The Key may refer to: Common meanings * Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm * Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock * Key (ma ...

programming language, which is based on

Eiffel Eiffel may refer to: Places * Eiffel Peak, a summit in Alberta, Canada * Champ de Mars – Tour Eiffel station, Paris, France; a transit station Structures * Eiffel Tower, in Paris, France, designed by Gustave Eiffel * Eiffel Bridge, Ungheni, ...

. This language was previously known as the Apple Media Language (AML) which was part of the

. Both iShell and the Apple Media Tool were developed by Patrick Soquet, one of the founders of Tribeworks. The two tools share many design features in common. iShell differs in its distribution model from similar applications, allowing users access to the source code.

Features

Cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

creation and delivery (Macintosh and Windows) * Graphical reusable object and event based programming and design environment * Support and use of the

QuickTime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is a ...

media framework * Text support via basic

RTF RTF may refer to: Organisations * African Union Regional Task Force, the military operation of the RCI-LRA, 2011–2018. * Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française, a broadcaster in France, 1949–1964 * Russian Tennis Federation, the national go ...

and HTML, and common styled input fields * Pluggable architecture for the addition of external third-party plugins and scripts * Access local and remote media assets * XML creation and parsing through DOM and SAX * Flat file text database support * Common programming functions and logic for strings, numbers, etc. without the need for scripting

Third-party plugins

Numerous developers have taken advantage of iShell's community-source model to build commercial plugins for the software. tribalmedia acts as a reseller for many of these third-party developers. *Kromo: Adds several features to iShell, including database integration and filesystem functions. *Spunk: A companion program to Kromo, allows developer to incorporate web-based content into iShell projects. *ImageLayer: Full integration of Photoshop files. *ZebraSpeak: Adds text-to-speech and advanced keyboard interaction to iShell. *ZebraTools: Adds numerous new features to iShell. *OpenTribe plugins: iSQUALE, DiSx, iStorm, iGDIP, iDream

External links

*{{official website, http://www.iShell.com
iShell Wikitribalmedia homepageiShell 101
Multimedia software