Director published DCR files that were played using the Adobe Shockwave Player, in addition to compiling native executables for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

Director supports a graphical user interface framework with basic controls and allows interaction with external files and certain Windows APIs.

The 3D capability includes the ability to create geometry on the fly from code, hardware accelerated model display, and advanced lighting features.

For example, there are Xtras for OS desktop manipulations (creating folders, files, icons, shortcuts, registry editing) and Shell control, dedicated text processing (RegX), PDF readers, and many more.

With Xtras, Director can be extended to support additional media types beyond those that the stock version of the software allows.

With the change in new versions of Director, Xtra developers need to modify their products to maintain ongoing support.

Other publishing options include a stand-alone executable file called projectors, supported on Macintosh and Windows operating systems, and with Director 12, output for iOS.

to have the Flash plugin pre-installed on machines for users, so that they would not be prompted to install any additional software[citation needed].

At that point in time (1998–2000), broadband internet access was not the norm for most users, and the fivefold difference in size[citation needed] was significant.

The first Director release under the Adobe brand (v. 11), released after a gap of four years, featured DirectX 9 and Unicode support and extended 3D capabilities based on the NVIDIA PhysX engine, as well as bitmap filters, enhanced video, audio and image file formats support, and Adobe Flash CS3 integration.