Flashvalley - Flash articles - MDM Zinc 3.0 (Pandora) beta preview

If you don't know what Zinc is, it is a third party tool used by Flash developers to create advanced projectors (exe files) that can be used as desktop applications or desktop gadgets.

Over the years these tools, also called "SWFtoEXE", have evolved to a point where it is now possible to create very interactive desktop applications that can, for example, pull content from a remote server or create and save a file locally. You can even create a little FTP client in Flash and many other interesting things that could not be created with Flash alone.

For those of you who haven't followed the latest news on the MDM forum, you will be pleased to know that on the 18th January MDM Zinc 3.0 (aka "Pandora") Beta was released for all Registered Zinc 2.x Users.

The full version will be available to buy and download on the 31st January 2008. I also suspect a demo will be made available around that time for those who want to give it a try before buying it.

MDM has been very silent regarding the development of the new version of Zinc, at least for those who were not participating in the closed beta. Very few updates for the previous version have been released over the past 6 months and there has been a noticeable lack of support on the MDM forum. I guess the developer team was concentrating on the new version of the software instead of "patching the old". We can't really blame them for this since, at the end of the day, we should be benefiting from their efforts. Anyway, Zinc 3.0 is a week away and hopefully here to stay. For now let's have a closer look at the beta version...

First impressions

After a quick and painless installation on my Vista Home premium laptop and starting the application the first thing that I noticed was that the new interface has been skinned in a very "Windows Vista" fashion (click picture on the left).

I am not a big fan of this type of fancy skin and hopefully there will be some possibilities in the final version to swap back to a more classic type of skin. Anyway this is just a little detail. Let's now have a look at the new layout itself.

You will notice that the layout has changed; all elements of the interface can be moved around and rearranged at your convenience very much like in Flash. This is a neat feature although it took me a bit of time to understand how you could hook the panel in the right position using the little icons ( top, left, right and bottom icons) that appear as soon as you start dragging a panel around. Once you have understood the concept it is actually very easy to move everything around.

All properties and parameters for your Zinc Application can now be set using these panels. It is actually a lot quicker than in the previous version where you had to navigate through different tabs to set the properties end parameters for your Zinc application. I have taken a screenshot of the Application panel (click picture on the left) which will give you a good idea of what I mean.

After fiddling for 15 minutes with the different panels and moving them around I have to say that the new layout in version 3 feels a lot more natural than the one in version 2. Although I haven't been working with this new version of Zinc for a long time I have no doubt that it will enhance my productivity.

Also it is important to note that the application starts pretty quickly and is very responsive. As an indicator I am using Vista Home premium with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7100 with 2gigs of Ram, I have not tried it on XP but from my experience with Vista, XP users should notice an even greater increase in responsiveness.

What's new in Zinc 3.0 ?

Here is a list of the new features that have been implemented in MDM Zinc 3.0

X-Platform - X-Compile
It is now possible to compile your application for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. This is a great implementation since we previously had to buy a separate plugin to be able to compile for the MAC.

Adobe Flash 9 Compatible
MDM claims Zinc™ 3.0 is 100% compatible with Flash 9 on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux! This means you can start working with the latest release of Flash without the worry of compatibility.
I have not been able to verify this assertion but as far as I am aware the compatibility of AS3.0 with ZINC 2.5 was reaching a good state of completion so I suspect that their claim should not be far from the truth with the new version of Zinc 3.0

Stable {mdm}Scrip 3.0 API
The Zinc programming language has been updated to provide a more stable platform for your Zinc projects, whilst being fully compatible with ActionScript 1, 2 and 3. As said above the MDM script has been updated to provide full compatibility with AS3.0. When using Flash CS3 you will need to import the MDM SWC in order to make everything work. For your information this can be done by creating a document class like the one below:

package {
    import mdm.*
    public class main {
        public function main():void {
            mdm.Application.init(this, onInit);
        }
        public function onInit():void {
            // start application...
        }
    }

This step is not compulsory for your AS1.0 and AS2.0 projects.

.Extendable Architecture for Windows and Mac OSX
Zinc™ 3.0 has been built upon an extendable architecture. Virtually every aspect of Zinc 3.0 can be extended through official Zinc™ modules or 3rd-party extensions. Developers can even develop their extensions in C++/Delphi and/or Carbon/Cocoa. In Version 2 the extendable Architecture was only available for Windows (via the extension creator). The new 3.0 SDK is available for Windows and Mac OSX.

Modularized Command API
{mdm}Script™ 3.0 is now completely modularized. This means that you only need to include the libraries that are required in your Application, reducing the overhead on your compiled Projector! This is a good thing since it is aimed at improving the stability and general speed of the application. Again it will need further testing to see if there are any real improvements compared to the previous version of Zinc.

Final comments

I haven't been able to find a complete list of all the changes, alterations and removals of the Zinc commands compared to the previous version but it will be available in the final release. This is just a preview and this article will be updated as I start using Zinc 3.0.

I have been using Zinc version 2 for the past few years and I have to say that I have been a very happy customer. I have built many applications with Flash and Zinc and I have always managed to solve the problems I ran into thanks to the support forums and the Zinc community.

Like many Flash developers I think that the quality of the support for this type of product is a very important factor before making the final decision to buy it or not. I am also planning to buy version 3.0 and I am putting a lot of hopes on the new version. Time will tell and I will be back with updates.

flashvalley.com