Simple Wrapper - Single exe

[danefergan]

Hello FlashKit'ers (& Northcode),

I'm creating a reasonably simple Flash presentation, to be finally distributed via email as a projector of some kind.

The app is a jumped-up power point style presentation, so doesn't need much clever functionality just clean email popup and browser popup, which I was planning on using some of the free apps (such as Northcode's helper apps or Jesters Web/Email similar apps).

Problem is that these helper apps, and my need to embed Video means there'll be a number of external files floating around, not very email friendly... so the the actual question:

Does anyone know of a simple, reliable solution to package up a Flash projector and assets into one file?

Preferably one that doesn't cost $200+ and comes with enough functions to control a power station, as the project doesn't really seem to warrant that kind of solution.

I've also looked into installers, but being a presentation an installer seems overkill (and a little intimidating to just view something).

Any help massively appreciated.
Dan
Dan

[Northcode]

Preferably one that doesn't cost $200+

That's where you're likely to run into problems.

Screenweaver went open source a couple of years ago, so you can try that but support is pretty much only from the original developer and he's trying to make a buck doing that so you're likely to blow through $200+ pretty fast if the tool doesn't do what you need right out of the box.

[danefergan]

Thanks. If there's no half way house then I'll download some of the trials and work out the best option.

I've seen many a post asking about the pros/cons of the various SWF to EXE apps, so I won't ask that again... but may come back to quiz people about specifics. Hope that's ok.

Thanks again,
Dan

[jasonsplace]

You're going to run into problems just sending an EXE as is through e-mail. Many e-mail servers delete them before they ever get to their recipient. You could always zip everything up and have all of the secondary files in a subfolder. Then when you send the e-mail just instruct people to download and extract the zip file. It's a free solution and will get everything sent to your end user in 1 file.

[danefergan]

I've been having a look through the various apps.

So far SWF Studio seems great (not meaning to be bias), I managed to get something up and running with in 10 minutes of having it downloaded.

Zinc looks and feels great, but didn't seem quite to do things the way I expected.

mProjector seems to do the desktop widgets great, but more standard presentation stuff seems a few more lines of code away than useful.

Swish Studio seemed to do everything I wanted, and for a lot cheaper. This was disappointing because I was looking forward to 'having' to buy something bigger, and then finally building the Desktop game I've been daydreaming about for years.

Though in testing I've had troubles with it playing on an older test machine, due to a certain missing DLL (gdiplus.dll). I'm assuming it doesn't quite package up enough content to play on all machines. Can anyone enlighten me on what exactly is happening, to help work out whether it's fixable, or a potential problem with any Swf2Exe I buy.

Thanks again,
Dan

[Northcode]

gdiplus.dll exposes some useful graphics functions which Swish Studio is using but since they don't redistribute that dll your users MUST have it already or your projectors won't run. I believe they have a gdiplus installer somewhere on their site that you can ship with your projectors.

The gdiplus DLL is a Microsoft redistributable file and should already be on Windows 2000 and XP (and newer) systems. The problem with trying to install it automatically is that WFP (Windows File Protection) will kick in on these newer systems. The lesser of two evils apparently was to leave the DLL out and run on new systems and fail on some (older) systems.

Almost standalone