FlashJester’s Creator

FlashJester has recently updated it's Creator-tool to version 1.2 and is the first to market with a tool supporting MS Windows 2000. Creator let's you make screensavers out of your Flash-files that can be almost freely distributed (see separate box).

Creator can do a lot of things like making a custom install-program, show realtime previews in the screensaver-dialog, playing midi-files, password protection, compressing the file, custom set-up boxes, dispalying readme-files and more.

Making the screensaver
You can choose the gradient behind the setup-dialoges, add a custom bitmap and choose wich of the dialogs to display during the setup process. Creator also supports multiple languages during setup if this is needed. When all the settings have been filled out, you just choose "build" and the installation-file is created. The files generated are about 500Kb in size, wich includes the full, professional-looking setup-program and the screensaver itself.

Screensaver Licence Policies
If more than 10.000 downloads your screeensaver, you're supposed to upgrade your program ($200-300). This is in addition to the $395 you'll have to pay for a licence. Some competitors sell similar programs for less than $150 without these restrictions These programs often offer a little less features. The only Macintosh screensaver-tool, ScreenTime from Macsourcery, have a similar licence-policy.

Setup Options
Creator allows custom, irregular (not square) bitmaps for your screensaver settings-box. This is a nice feature that can make your settings-box just as cool looking as WinAmp or Sonique MP3-players. What can be inserted into this box is however rather limited. You can add a URL, email and some "free text". As a workaround, you can more text as part of the image... I must admit that I would rather have some options letting the user turn of any sound used in the screensaver, type in any text, choosing what kind of interaction should stop the saver and maybe a setting where the user could interact with the projector via text-files and the "load variables" command in Flash?

Ease of use
The program uses simple step-by-step intructions, and you fill in important information, choose a projector and add any extra files. A lot of the program is devoted to the setup-process and how this should look. The program has a unconventional, but good layout that makes the program a breeze to use. This is the kind of program where you'll propably never open the help-file, because you won't need it.

Bugs
During our tests, we discovered only one bug. Screensavers on NT may take up to 20 seconds to restore the screen after hitting a key or moving the mouse. This is a rather annoying bug that seem to have been avoided om W95/98 by minimizing the projector upon user interaction, before closing it.

Summary
All in all, Creator is the least buggy screensaver tool for Flash we have tried, and the results look professional. There is no problems, you can simply sit down and produce. This alone can make it worth it's rather steep price of $395 ($695 for unlimited copies). Creator can also be used together with any other of the jTools from FlashJester. This will allow video playback, printing and launching external programs.

 

 

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