5. Resources

a) FSCommand/Projectors

Standalone & Applications and Macintosh Forums on FlashKit Board should be a best place to start (and continue). There are also interesting tutorials on FlashKit about manipulating projectors, opening files from projector with batch files and autorun features.

Basic info about FSCommand and Flash size from Macromedia site.

Three useful tutorials in our own AS.org tutorial section: Launch Applications, Opening Documents and Execute Files from Flash projectors (see Related Articles, at the bottom of this page)

All the things you ever dreamed of doing with Flash (but never dared to ask how): check "Flash and offline usage" part of Sx's "Must Read Threads" at were-here.com and enjoy (there is a smaller version of it at FlashKit)...

Very good FREE application to launch, save, copy, move, print, delete files, manipulate windows, play with registry and dll's... from Flash projector is called Flash Command Line Tools. Works with Flash 3 to 5 but not with MX. FlashGeek is a program originaly meant to let you open documents from Flash 5 projectors, but will work with MX also since it passes arguments though text files (the only drawback is that you need a separate copies of program's .exe and .txt file for every document you want to open). If you want to launch files from MX projector you could use another two free applications: Executor and freeMX. Both need Flash OCX to be installed on users machine, but the latter is more complete since it will check for ocx and if it is not there, freeMX will install it (you should include the full player installer on CD - it is free but be sure to sign the licence agreement at Macromedia site).

Les Paone recently renewed his site (you can still find his FREE edited player) and included a new tool for MX projectors called SOP. Using Flash Shared Objects it allows running programs, opening, deleting and printing files, minimizing and maximizing your projector.

Here is (partial) list of 3rd party tools with which you can customize your projector and enhance its functionalities: SWF Studio, Flash 'N Pack, LPFlashEX, FlashAnts, Jugglor. They are all comercial. If you are looking for a freeware tool try Resource Hacker (here is a nice tutorial about it). It will let you customize some of the projector features, but beware because the issue about its legality is not quite clear. Northern Codeworks has some nice free utilities too: Topmost will let you open browser window (or any other) in front of fullscreen projector; Browse will open an Windows Explorer on the root of the drive it's launched from (it has no parameters so it will work from Flash 5 and MX); Center will let you center the window of application launched from projector (Flash 5 and MX); Kill is used to close any window from projector (Flash 5, check here for the documentation); with Min you can minimize any application running alongside your projector (Flash 5); Wallpapr allows you to set Desktop wallpaper from projector (Flash 5) and if you are interested in making Flash projector "talk" with Visual Basic, check these examples: fscommand.zip and flashvb.zip.

All above mentioned resources are only for PC. As said before, there are no 3rd party tools to manipulate Mac projectors. This may be the only possible solution at the moment.

Here is the link for details about that problem/bug for MX fullscreen projector on Mac (together with some problems about Autostart feature on OSX). Applescript in detail from apple.com. You will need to have CarbonLib 1.5 or latter installed if you want to run Flash MX projector on Mac OS 9.x (read the technote). Another conflict that may cause problems with executing MX projectors in OS 9.x (they may run slow or not even run at all) is with Logitech MouseWare extension (technote).


b) CD Burning

Comprehensive tutorial for burning hybrid CDs with Toast from the Roxio site.

David Hrycyszyn had very good in-detail tutorial about burning hybrid CDs on Mac on were-here.com, but since the site is down for the moment there is no link for it (I have a zipped version of his tutorial, so if anybody is interested, I will send it by mail).

Although not Flash centered, this two tutes can also be interesting: setpixel's one about burning Director projects, and Rose Marshack's one about enhanced music CDs. More usefull info about extra CDs (music and multimedia content) can be found in this thread.

As seen before, MacImage will allow PC users to create hybrid/crossplatform CDs (check their site, it's full of precious information about Mac/PC file transfer issues). Another program (much bigger and more expensive though) with same features is CDEveryWhere.

BBEdit and Iconographer for Mac users. Nice FREE icon editor for PC is @icon sushi.


Happy flashing and burning folks!!!

DiDi


PS: I welcome any feedback, comments, suggestions, more useful resouces... but PLEASE, do not e-mail me (unless, of course, you have a personal or business proposal ;) ), post on the original thread. I am not a guru for this subject, and when you post your comment or question on the forums, more people will see it and chances are better that you (and me and everybody else in the future) would get faster and better solution there then in my inbox. Cheers...

PPS: When I first wrote this FAQ/Tutorial I couldn't imagine so many people around would find it usefull :)... Thanks to everybody who had let me know it helped them in their projects - your feedback made my work on this continous... My only credit is for gathering all this info from around the net, so special thanks goes to all who share their knowledge in web Communities :). And in particular: thanks to Northcode for being more than just comercial programmer; to Sx for coming from where he comes and still being what he is; to all of you from AS.ORG but specialy to Jesse and Strok for making all this possible, to pixelwit for inspiring imagination, to Billy for this chalenge, to CyanBlue for being a caring brother, to Abelius for adventurous "afan de superaciÓn", to GRaphiX_FREAK for prompt capture help... and I could go on for ages. Thanks!!!