Digital Workshop

Hi everyone
This is my first post.
I want to publish my publication as a web page, but i want it to autorun from a cd. Not upload it to a server. In other words I want it to run in the end users web browser not from the Opus exe.

Can this be done and how do I do it?

Bill.

You can just create an autorun.inf file in Notepad and save that to the root of your CD project. Just set the "open" line to the name of your HTML file:

Note that if you use the Plexus plugin (i.e. the normal Opus web plugin) then your end users will still need the plugin installed; in which case it's probably simpler to just use a standard Opus executable, rather than requiring the user to install any new software.
If you use the Flex (Flash) output this is not likely to be a problem, but you will have to cope with the limitations of the Flash output (no video, no external windows, etc).

Thank you very much Duncan.
That has helped a lot. What are the limitations of using Flex or flash other than the two you mentioned? Is there a list somewhere of htese limitations?

Thanks again
Bill.

Bill,

Click Help > Contents & Index and select the Search Tab. For some strange reason I have never been able to find "Flex" in the Index, but perhaps that's just me

Type "Flex" in the input box. Scroll down the list and choose: List of unsupported features in Opus Flex

That should answer some of your questions.

HTH

The following features of Opus are not supported when publishing with Opus Flex. This might seem like a long list but it is much shorter than the list of things that do work!

Publication

· Password Protection

· Busy cursor

· Layouts that use dividers, resizing or percentage sizes

· Databases

Chapters

· Chapters in external windows

· Non-resizing pages. All pages are resizable and maintain their aspect ratio

Graphical Objects

· Drag and drop appearances. Drag and Drop itself does work but not the extra object appearances.

Text

These features are not supported by text at any time:

· Background and shadow colours

· Display one section/paragraph at a time

· Do not display partial lines

· Read from disk file

· Hypertext highlights and click styles

· AutoNarrate

These features are not supported by static text:

· Inserted variables

· Hypertext

· Text input

These features are not supported by dynamic text:

· Vertical alignment (always top)

· Tabs

· Subscript and superscript

· Bullets

· Full justification

These features are not supported by dynamic text with device fonts:

· Rotation, skew and animation

Video

· Only animated GIF files work

· Always on top option

Effects

· Blend Alpha Effect

· Flare Effect

· Texture Effect

· Shadow Effect

Transitions

· 3D Transitions (for page)

· Fade Transitions (except Simple)

· Flame Transitions

· Jigsaw Transitions

· Kaleidoscope Transitions

· Pixel and Grid Transitions

· Special Reveal Transitions

· Water Transitions

· Page show transitions appear over the publication background colour and not over the top of the previous page

Triggers

· Right-mouse click

Actions

· Print action

· Close window action

· Show next object action

· Move object to cursor action

· Clipboard actions

· Midi and CD audio actions

· Roll, spin and skew animation actions

· Count words/lines actions

· Storage actions

· Launch file/search actions (launch web page works)

· Browser actions

· Database actions

· Clock actions

· File management actions

· MultiFrame actions

Miscellaneous

· All files option in Slideshow

· Browser objects

· DocView objects

· Scrollbars not proportional for dynamic text

· Vector join styles (all become rounded)

If using Flex you should also be aware that users of recent browsers are likely to see a warning the first time they run your swf publication locally (rather than over the Internet). I still produce files like this, but I do ensure that my users are alerted that the warning can be safely overridden for this publication.

Andrew