Wow, it was like reading an entry from my journal. I too vowed to never work on another flash projector application again. Zinc seems so powerful from the first glance. But keep in mind just because zinc will place something in the feature list, it doesn't mean it will work in all situations. Even, if you have made a prototype to prove to yourself before making a promise to a client. Do not trust Zinc to come through in the end. Grant put it best and it sounds like we both learned the hard way, Flash was not meant to make even the simplest applications. So if you are in a crunch buy some $700 duct tape (zinc) but don't be surprised when the bugs start rolling in.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Grant Cox Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 9:48 PM To: Flashcoders mailing list Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] If not Zinc, then what? 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 _______________________________________________ [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
