Which projector for creating .exe from Flash?

Question

Which tool would you recommend for creating standalone .exe files (Windows) from Flash? And why?

Answer 1

The Flash IDE does that quite nicely. It's configured at the "Publish Settings" and I really can't see any problems with the projectors it produces. Maybe you have something else in mind?

If you're trying to go for extra performance gains there is the Swiff Player ( http://www.globfx.com/products/swfplayer/ ) with the OpenGL accelaration, but they do not make it clear whether they support advanced scripting in the movies. Also there is the Zinc RAD Suite from MDM ( http://www.multidmedia.com/software/zinc/ ) which is specifically targeted for crossplatform development.

Answer 2

There really aren't any quick answers to this question. You should plan to spend some quality time with the product(s) you're evaluation if you're going to be using one of them day in and day out for any length of time.

All of the third party tools have trial versions. If you want to get a feel for each of the products the best thing to do is to download them and try them for yourself. When you download the trial, don't just fire up the UI, do something real with it. Build the examples and look at the example code. Pound on the product a bit, see what breaks (or doesn't).

Pick a simple but realistic project for yourself (like building a CD front end or something) and see how it goes with each product. Pick something that in a perfect world you could bang out in a day and plan to spend a week on it to get yourself over the initial learning curve. Most of these tools cover too much ground to just be absorbed by intuition. RTFM.

Most, if not all, of these tools also have online forums where you can interact with other users, ask for help, look at past problems and solutions and get a feel for the community. Definitely check out the forums, you'll probably be spending a lot of time in them. The forums are a big open window into the product and the company. See what kinds of problems people have or have had. Are the problems caused by the product (quality, doc, stability), by learning curves or other factors?

Finally, ask each company questions by forum, email or phone before you buy and see what kind of response you get. If you actually decide to try a little test project you'll probably have to ask for support at some point anyway, so you might as well give that a test drive too.