Why Choose Zinc™?

Put simply Zinc™ 3.0 is the Premier choice for developing Real Desktop Applications from Adobe® Flash® and Flex®. MDM was established over 5 years ago and our primary focus has always been on delivering a viable Flash Application Development Tool. Zinc™ has pioneered and innovated the SWF2EXE market and continues to do so year on year.

Zinc™ 3.0 is used by the largest and most recognized brands in the World, in over 75 countries (Click Here for Case Studies). Zinc has the largest Development Community of any other SWF2EXE tool, backed by the support of the MDM Development and Support Team.

Zinc™ 3.0 vs Adobe® AIR

Adobe AIR is described by Adobe as a tool to leverage "existing web development skills in HTML, AJAX, Flash and Flex to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop."

However, contrary to common belief, AIR is not a SWF2EXE Application. Adobe AIR is actually a "runtime", much like the Flash Player, which must be installed on an end users system. This runtime then allows AIR "applications" (or web based RIA's developed with Flash/Flex) to run on the users Desktop, even if no Internet connection is available. Apollo does NOT compile a standalone executable which can be copied/distributed to other users.

It is necessary for the Adobe AIR Runtime to be installed on an End-Users system before an AIR Application can be launched. The Table below demonstrates some key differences between using Zinc 3.0 and Adobe AIR to develop Desktop Flash Applications:

	Zinc™ 3.0	Adobe® AIR
Works with Flash CS3, Flex 2, ActionScript 3
Build for Windows
Build for Mac OSX
Build for Linux
100% Standalone Applications (No Dependencies)
Does not require Installation to Run
Alpha Transparency
File IO Command API
Browser Command API
Database Command API
Play External Video Files (AVI, Mpeg, Mov etc)
Distribute Applications via DRM Solutions
Connect to 3rd Party DLL's/Shared Libraries
Run from External Drives, USB, CD, DVD

The actual use of Adobe AIR differs quite dramatically from Zinc 3.0. Whilst both tools use the terms "Desktop" and "Flash" in their descriptions, the end results are very different, and operate in very different ways. Adobe AIR is geared towards developing an RIA for the Internet first, and then being able to run that on the desktop via the AIR Runtime.

Zinc 3.0 is a dedicated development tool for creating Flash/Flex projects specifically for the Desktop which requires no further components to run, and provides support and access to a far greater number of functions specific to the desktop.

Note: Feature matrix last updated January 2009. Features & Functionality of Adobe® AIR may change with subsequent updates. MDM will make every effort to ensure the details and comparisons on this page are reflected accurately.