Digital Workshop

I want to raise the other platforms issue again ...

Preamble: I know that at various times in the past the question of a runtime engine for the Mac has been raised. I know that Apple's market share does not justify the developer investment. As a former system developer I also understand that graphics engines that use Direct X need major re-engineering for other platforms, which is why there are so few games for the Mac as against the PC. I should mention also that I have looked at the Flashpro exe projector for the Mac and also at Runtime Revolution studio: both are great products that will play flex-produced swfs, but you have to leave the comfort of Opus for some of your development work - not good.

So why bring this up again? well, the Apple market share situation is changing ... on the strength of the "ipod effect" and some really inspired design and marketing the Mac share is projected by IDC to grow to 5% in 2006, from 2.6 - 3% or so today. Quite impressive growth. Moreover, the Apple desk share varies up or down when you break down the market into sectors. In the education sector Macs have a greater share than in business desktops, for example.

I'm developing a big multimedia product for education and the NGO sector, and my market research suggests that I will need a Mac solution alongside the PC product. IMO Flash output is not all that great for a CD-based full-featured product, especially if you want to protect your content. And, of course, I use Opus because Director costs too much time and money.

I wonder, therefore, (whew! I hear you say) if DW would consider the following (given that a full Mac runtime for Opus is not on the cards):

a. Looking at how Flex can be tied in to MDM's Flash studio Pro to produce executables that run on Mac CDs, for example.

or,

b. Making an addon that could generate a Mac projector from Flex output.

I've tried Flex and FlashPro for Mac output and it is hit and miss. I for one would be willing to pay more than £100 for an Opus add-on that could build Flex projectors for the Mac. This might be a way to way to produce Mac CDs from Opus without the bother of a fill-blown Mac projector. Any thoughts on this?

Brian
Opus Pro XE 4.5, Win 2000 & XP.

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

From previous discussions on this board, it appears that Flash Studio Pro (now ZINC V2) can be configured to work with Flex publications. Please see the following post for further details:

viewtopic.php?t=313&highlight=mdm

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

hi,

you will find some problems using zinc with flex produced swf files. i tried to get this solved via mdm support staff but they found it difficult to get it to work themselves, so ensure you've downloaded the latest version of mdm zinc. make sure you test the output on mac first before sending it out to clients.

by the way, zinc2 is the sequal to flash studio pro.


luke

Thanks Robin

I did follow that thread but I have not been able to achieve consistent results. With regard to thread of post

viewtopic.php?t=313&highlight=mdm

I was wondering if there has been any follow up of the last paragraph in Luke's post?



Brian

Luke,

Many thanks for the prompt response. I'll experiment with the latest version of Zinc and post my findings.

Have you gone further on the solution for making the production of Mac CD projectors easier? How is that coming along? I would be very keen to find out more about it.



best regards,

Brian

hi,

i've been busy recently so i haven't made much progress on it since. but now that i think of it i'll have a play around with it over the bank holiday weekend.

i'll let you know,


luke

Brian, I have been using Zinc for a long time now (formerly MDM FlashPro) and I can tell you that works 100% with swf produced using Opus Flex.

The only suggestion for DW is to upgrade the Flex component to be compatible with FSCommands which is the power behind using Zinc. Apart from this, I strongly recommend the MAC plug that you have to purchase separately to use with Zinc.

I hope this helps
German

hi,

zinc works with flex produced flash in windows, and the produced projector works fine.

with zinc2 and mac os plugin the produced projectors don't work with mac os. the support staff at mdm found it difficult to get it working. even having a native macromedia mx produced swf file point to an external flex produced swf file failed to work correctly.

if you can get it working and have tested it in mac os x please lets us know.


luke

I thought that perhaps I was doing something wrong, but this latest from Luke reflects my own experience and confirms my worst fears. German, how do you get Zinc2 to make Mac projectors that work? I am a bit worried as my latest project depends on getting a Mac version of the pub on the market by year end.

Brian

Hi, now I am wondering if the whole issue is because I am still using the MDM Flashpro instead of the new Zinc and I have been thinking to upgrade but now that you are mentioning the problems better not.

With my old version is just a matter of choose the swf file, give all the proprerties, decide if you want to use a skin, due date and all that sort of thing and then apply the mac plug to produce it.

Without knowing the full scale of your project I can't be more specific but a good solution will be to produce the swf and embed it into a html file, that way you are 100% guarantee that your product will work on a MAC since it will use the native MAC Flash plug for Safari or any other browser for that matter.

Using html does not need to be a boring page, you can produce a full screen page with html and people will not notice much difference.

Since I'm using this proudct I have produced three mac projects and so far I have no received any complaint.

Cheers
German