which tool to use

[fantasio]

hi there!

i need to make a windows standalone application with flash, which needs to be:

-fully encrypted ( no way of decopiling shpould be possible)
-supporting serial numbers for the final application
-distributed with an installer
-supporting xp and vista

which of all those swf to exe programs is best suited for me?

thanks

[Northcode]

My standard response to that type of question is...

Most of the time, what you get by asking "what tool should I use" is biased propaganda from the vendor or great testimonials from current users but none of that will be of any real decision making value to you, there just aren't any quick answers. You should plan to spend some quality time with each product if you're going to be using one of them day in and day out.

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.

fully encrypted ( no way of decopiling shpould be possible)
You're never going to find this. There are varying degrees of difficulty in reverse engineering something, but if it runs on the users machine then anyone with a debugger and enough time/energy will be able to crack it. Fact of life.

supporting serial numbers for the final application
You can either get this by building your own system with the tool you choose or you can use a third party tool like Software Passport (www.siliconrealms.com) to handle it for you. Some of those protection tools also help you with setting up a store to sell your apps.

distributed with an installer
Inno Setup (www.jrsoftware.org) and the Nullsoft Scriptable Installer (http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page) are two very good and very free tools you can use to build professional quality installers. I wouldn't waste time looking for a product that includes an installer, focus on the core functionality you need and pick an installer you like.

supporting xp and vista
That should be a baseline feature of just about any swf2exe tool that's available today and it should be noted somewhere on their web site or in the products system requirements.

My company makes SWF Studio (http://www.northcode.com) so if you have any specific questions I can answer them for you.

[fantasio]

ah... ok.

thanks a lot for the info.

basically i guessed all the answers already, but of course i was hoping for something like:
use this, the rest is crap
well i guess i have to make room for some serious testing time.

cheers

[Northcode]

I am biased, but if you check out our forums I think our record will back me up on this...

Use SWF Studio the rest is crap