publish pc & mac to USB questions

i work on PC, so publishing to mac is still pretty foreign to me...

we have created a flash application that's being distributed on a locked USB drive. we published to PC (.exe) and mac (.hqx)... everything having been tested on PC worked fine, but then with mac we started running into issues:

the drive is locked, so when the mac opens the .hqx, it extracts the app onto the user's computer... this becomes a problem, as called files (flvs, mp3s, etc.) in the flash document can no longer be linked to (they're in the usb drive and not the computer)

my question is, if we publish to mac and get the .hqx, can we then transport that .hqx to a mac computer, extract the app file, and bring the app file onto the USB drive for distribution? will this pose any problems? i can't imagine that it would, since if the USB were not locked, the mac would automatically extract to the drive anyway, right? but i'm not sure...

thanks for your help on this... i hope i've been clear...

If the app inside the HQX file is an older Mac binary with a resource fork then you won't be able to store it on the USB unless the drive is formatted using NTFS. If you do that though, I'm not sure that the Mac will be able to read the drive.

Anyhow, Flash only spits out HQX files if you're publishing for Flash 8. If you publish for Flash 9 then you get an application bundle instead. On Windows this is a folder with a .App extension). When you move that to a Mac, it treats the folder like a single application. The application bundle should be transportable between PC and Mac without any issues.

But (you knew there was a "but" coming) the one issue you will have, is the little custom app I built for you will need to be modified because the FSCommand folder has to be moved inside the application bundle when you publish in Flash 9 format.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned all this, but give me a shout and I'll get that sorted out for you, it's pretty minor surgery :)