Simple Utility that Will Disable Maximize of Projector

[drumax]

I am aware of Zinc (which was disappointing) and SWF Studio (demo didnt work for some reason, I contacted them with nor eply just yet) but there were problems with these and they simply offer more than I need. Is there a simple utility that will allow me to eliminate the users ability to maximize the player window? Something that wont force me to bundle my 50 FLV videos into the EXE making an EXE thats like 300 MB...something that will not change anything about how the projector works but allow some projector top bar modifications?

I tend to remember long ago there was a very simple 1-2 screen utility that allowed you to simply check a few boxes, export and it acted in every way like a regular projector (exe) but simply disable a few options (like maximize).

Anyone know of such a utility?

[Northcode]

The min/max buttons are not simply "chrome" that you can disable, they are there because when the developer who wrote the projector code created the window, he/she added styles to the window creation call and then added code to handle them. The only way to get rid of them is to (i) change the window style after the window has been created, (ii) intercept all maximize events and block them or (iii) like Zinc and SWF Studio do and create your own flash playback window where you have full control. The first two solutions require adding a wrapper around the Flash EXE which necessarily changes how it works.

I did reply to your first email, just not to your second one yet...

You said the "select" buttons in SWF Studio weren't working on XP Pro. I've never seen that before. It shouldn't even be possible for some of the buttons. For example, there's no code in the UI to enable or disable the three Select buttons on the Output Tab. So are they disabled (greyed out) or do they just not do what you expect? Is there an error of some kind? Are other Select buttons actually disabled? If so, which ones?

Are you also using SWF Studio 3.8 build 333? Did you download SWF Studio from our site? If you got it somewhere else it may be a hacked/cracked version or loaded with spyware. Ditch it. Our site is the only authorized download source.

[drumax]

I answered your response (thanks for getting back to me). I am not sure the problem but as I have said to you in e-mail...the buttons dont grey out, they just dont do anything when pressed as if they are inactive buttons. They dont trigger what they are meant to trigger.

I wanted to switch over doing DVD shells from Director to Flash (since Adobe pretty much updated and then dumped Director) but Flash doesnt give you a simple check box to disable maximize like Director and this is a problem. If people maximize something that is playing very well done 3D animations, then it affects the quality of the animations, I must be able to lock the window size and thats all I needed but with Flash I need to buy a third party program and then that affects how I code my links!!

Now I am also finding out that I must open PDFs I link to in a browser. I wouldnt mind that much but I also link animations from the PDF and when the PDF opens in a browser, it screws up by ability to link an animation from the PDF (and locks up the browser).

Not to mention I have to convert all my animations to FLV while Director will play the native animation WITH its native controls.

So I am thinking Flash might not be ideal at this stage to use for anything but very simple authoring of DVDs. Its still lacking.

[Northcode]

The Select buttons not working is REALLY strange. All they do is attempt to open the standard Windows file dialogs (file open & browse for folder). There's very little code in there and it's not complicated stuff. Even if they don't work you should be able to put the path to the file you want into the text field (by just typng it or using copy and paste).

Is there anything "different" about your XP install? Is it running in a virtualized environment? Do you have any shell extensions installed that interfere with the Windows file dialogs? What (if any) anti-virus software are you using?

SWF Studio will let you play video files (other than FLV) as long as the codec you need is installed on the machine. In that case you wouldn't need to convert your files to FLV format and you can get notifications when a video finishes for advancing to the next frame in your timeline.