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PutneySwope · Sep 9, 2006, 02:57 PM

Does anyone know of an application that I can use to create a simple GUI for a CD-ROM that will contain two items: a Quicktime movie and a PDF file (and a Readme file).

It needs to be an app that will allow the GUI to appear when the CD is inserted on ANY platform (e.g., Windows, OS X, OS 9, XP, etc.)

Ultimately, I would want it to look some like this... (but the Quicktime movie where the folder is, etc.)

Hopefully, I'm being clear enough. Thanks.

PutneySwope · Sep 11, 2006, 04:12 PM

Wow. I can't believe no one knows anything about this.

dimmer · Sep 11, 2006, 05:22 PM

Having one implementation that works on all of those platforms is going to be hard (OS 9 doesn't, as far as I remember, support folder windows for example, and many XP users turn that feature off). You can probably make a solution that works maybe 30% of the time, but I would call that a win. Your "best bet" might be to do a little flash app that will run on all the platforms. Overall though, I'd consider a simpler approach: users are not used, for example, to dragging a quicktime movie around to install something.

As in all things: make it as simple as possible and no simpler.

analogika · Sep 11, 2006, 06:07 PM

The OS X method would be to include an image file in the CD/disk image, name it something starting with a "." (to make it invisible in the Finder), and set it as teh background image. Arrange the icons exactly the way you want them, close the window, and then burn or save exactly that, with exactly those .DS_Store files (which is where window/icon settings are stored).

That will only work on OS X, though.

In OS 9, a similar thing was done, except that instead of a background image, whatever graphic you wanted had to be split up into 16x16-pixel graphics and set as icons for a bunch of files or folders, which were then arranged in the Finder window to form the image.

PutneySwope · Sep 12, 2006, 12:18 AM

Thanks dimmer and analogika. Looks like this is more complicated than I thought.

I just wanted to avoid users opening the CD and seeing a Readme file, a PDF and a Quicktime movie scattered randomly about. Kinda blah. But as dimmer said, simpler is probably better. I'm already having an issue with CDs burned through Toast 7 not reading on certain older PCs. Oh joy!