Digital Workshop

I am creating a training course with Opus that will be taken via CD ROM. I have tried publishing both as a stand alone publication and as an iO plugin based stand alone publication. I am able to get both to work however the iO version creates the obvious issue with installing a plugin. This has brought up a couple of questions:

What is the differences between these two methods for CD distribution?
Is there any benefit to using the plugin in this type of delivery or is this strickly when publishing for the web?
Is there any negative to using the regular stand alone pub for this?

Thanks in advance
Dave
Opus Pro 04, Windows XP Pro

Hi

I've also thought about this for another reason: download overhead. But, using the plug-in means the viewer has one more step: downloading the player. My guess is that, while it's no big deal for most, they'll always be a few who won't want to download, for whatever reason.

So, for CD-ROM delivery, I can't see any reason to use the Plexus (IO) plug-in, unless your CD is at the disk space limit. Then you could save the relatively small player overhead, 2-3 MB's, which is not much when your at 650 or 700MB.

One item I've been unable to figure out is how to launch a copy of the plug-in .exe that could be included with the main pub, for example, for those with limited internet access, difficulty downloading. In experimenting with this, no matter how I set the path to the plug-in .exe (alternate path, file://, seems possible in the publishing settings, advanced tab), the result is a screen pop-up asking to install the download from the DW website.

In any event, for your purposes, the full .exe seems the way to go. Other Forum colleagues and the DW team may have additional thoughts to help guide you.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

That option is for corporate and educational users with large intranets where they want to restrict the end users access to the internet or to save downloads time/usage. It can only point to a web based player distribution; not an executable.

If you are using the Plexus (nee iO) based player you either need to provide the installer as a separate element or simply allow it to use the automatic web download.

Thanks Duncan for your reply.

If I understand correctly, providing the plug-in as a separate element would mean, for example, including it in a set-up package and having the Windows installer ask, and if OK, install and run it first.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

Yes. The plugin installer is available from the website so you can just download it and distribute it with your plugin-powered publications.

However, if you are distributing on CD/DVD you may as well just use the normal player for the convenience of your end users.

Thanks, Duncan.

Kind Regards,
Stephen