Yeah I have to say, I've been using zinc for xray's wrapper and they were always very responsive to my requests on the forums. But admittedly, even I don't use the EXE version of Xray because of the memory and CPU issues.
That being said, I felt like their support was very good and they seem like patient people ;) On 3/28/06, Grant Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > We just did our first application with a projector app like this. > Thankfully the target was only for Windows 2000 and XP, but it needed to > support nice transparency with non-rectangular windows. > > First I gave Screenweaver OS a go, but it has some major bugs, and > almost no development (well, not on the version 3, apparently they are > working hard on the beta version 4). After a couple of days we decided > that we needed an application that could provide support. > > We looked at them all, and decided on Zinc, as it seemed to have the > most active forums and developers (ie they respond to bug reports > quickly), it was cross platform (thinking about future projects), and > had a lot of features. Unfortunately we found that CPU usage was > extreme - with an application approximately 800x600 it would use 65% of > a 3.0GHz cpu just sitting there, and 100% cpu when there was any > animation inside the window. This is due to the transparency - it was > much better with a regular rectangular window. > > As our client found this unacceptable we moved to mProjector (at their > recommendation). We found mProjector to make the smallest file size, > and have the best CPU usage. Unfortunately their support is much slower > - the forums are much less busy and the devs will take some days to > respond to emails. They were in the process of releasing their new > version at this time, so this may explain it (they are a much smaller > operation than Zinc). Unfortunately we found there was a bug that would > cause the application to crash sporadically (when loading external > movies/data), and some two months after reporting this as a bug it was > still on their "todo" list. Also transparency was fine in the Flash 7 > build, but in Flash 8 was very patchy (I believe this has been fixed > since). > > So, we had to move to Northcode SWF Studio. This was our last option, > as we couldn't find any other Projector applications that had > synchronous commands (and switching to asynchronous would be far too > much work this late in the project). Northcode has fairly quiet forums, > but their devs replied to every post at least once a day, and responded > to emails within a day (with the timezone difference from Aus to Canada > I thought that was pretty good). The downside is that their > transparency support was fairly poor - the only reliable method for > non-rectangular windows was to have 1bit transparency. They did provide > me with a pre-release version with better transparency (which I believe > has been released now), however this did have pretty much the same CPU > issue as Zinc. > > So, overall: > - Northcode (which we ended up going with) had the best support and > least bugs. But did make the largest filesize. > - Zinc has the most features, and the CPU issue appeared to just be > Flash 8 - all three had ver poor CPU usage when using nice transparency > in Flash 8. Medium filesize > - mProjector had the smallest filesize, and with Flash 7 had the best > CPU performance. The app/libraries had the least features (ie no cross > platform, no screensavers, no support for standard rectangular windows). > > And at the end of it all, I have vowed to avoid working on any Projector > applications like this again. They all seem like patchy solutions, and > I guess that's why Macromedia never added more than basic fscommands to > the standard Flash projectors. > > Regards, > Grant Cox > > > Chris Velevitch wrote: > > >On 3/29/06, Gene Jannece <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > >>I've been reading pros and cons of using Zinc, I started to wonder what > are the pros and cons of other projectors? > >> > >> > > > >Flash Magazine did a comparison of projectors. > > > >http://www.flashmagazine.com/1095 > >http://www.flashmagazine.com/1097 > > > >It's a little old now, but is a good starting point. > > > > > >Chris > >-- > >Chris Velevitch > >Manager - Sydney Flash Platform Developers Group > >www.flashdev.org.au > >_______________________________________________ > >[email protected] > >To change your subscription options or search the archive: > >http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > > > >Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software > >Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training > >http://www.figleaf.com > >http://training.figleaf.com > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > [email protected] > To change your subscription options or search the archive: > http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders > > Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software > Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training > http://www.figleaf.com > http://training.figleaf.com > -- John Grden - Blitz _______________________________________________ [email protected] To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
