Pocket PC Thoughts: Add Some Zinc To Your Software: MDM Zinc For Pocket PC 2 Reviewed

In The Beginning, There Was Flash
No one could have predicted back in 1996 when Macromedia first released Flash the unique history this 10 year old product would write. Originally most prevalent in animations and interactive areas of websites, Flash evolved into something attempted but rarely achieved in computing: a compiled program that could be run on a variety of operating systems, nearly seamlessly, due to an ultra-optimized flash player application available for download.

A few years back, Macromedia released a flash player for Pocket PC, which was freely downloadable to users, then decided to make it ridiculously expensive, and then made free again after the outcry. But the flash player for the PPC wasn't all users thought - it did the back-end job all right but had no UI to load a movie (other than a properly formatted web page in PIE). Therefore, numerous applications (Such as those in Menneisyys's Roundup) were developed to make the plug-in a bit friendlier to users.

Flash content seemed to be safe for users to download, configure, and run themselves, given the right tools, but it was still off-limits for developers without some serious devotion given to coding a front-end for a flash animation. Worse yet, developers who had written something uber-cool in Flash were forced to learn a bit about programming in Windows Mobile to get their animations on the small screen. MDM Zinc was written for this audience - the programmer who simply wants a fast and effective way to distribute his flash animation / application to a Pocket PC without the hassle of re-inventing the wheel. If it's flash, Zinc can package it up and deliver it to a waiting Pocket PC, all with a few clicks and almost zero dirty work.

Enter Zinc
Zinc is a pretty unassuming application that packs a pretty good punch. To test the power of Zinc, I made up a quick flash animation, dubbed The Magic Thoughtsball (Check it out here and use it for your next technology purchase debate). The Thoughtsball was simple, with no consideration made that it would eventually become a PPC Application (as you can tell by the figure below!). It did, however, have some beefy animation and text transformations that I figured would put my K-JAM's processor through the paces when testing. To get the screenshot below, all I did was double click on the SWF file on my desktop, and it was loaded into Zinc. I wasn't too pleased that it made itself the default application for SWFs, but that's obviously not a big deal to most.


Figure 1: The main UI in Zinc. Notice the tabs in the upper right, clicking on them takes you to those settings. Alternatively you can click on the icons at the upper right to take you to the appropriate tab.

Loading my SWF into Zinc, I immediately could see that I'd have a scrunched up text issue if I went ahead with my program as is, thanks to the preview window. Since it was just a test, I decided to leave it as it was. You'll notice that the Input File tab has options for the output (an odd thing for an input tab, but whatever) including an encryption option and the option to bundle SQLCE support. Zinc provides example files on its website showing off SQLCE functionality, but suffice it to say, your flash apps can have access to a nice database backend if you so desire.

Lastly, you'll see that the Build button is immediately available. If you didn't care about customizing, you could build now and a nice CAB would be made for you, ready for device installation. But customizing is fun, and what better way to learn of the features of Zinc?