Publishing to a CD - issues?

[andrewkay]

I am publishing a course to a CD for the first time (we usually don't have courses running from CD's only from an LMS) and would like to find out if there are any issues with this.

These CD's will be used by guys serving in Iraq and deployed on ships that do not have the internet access to take required training, so it is important we get this right. When I run the course here on my laptop, I get a Flash Player Security message saying it stopped a "Potentially Unsafe Operation"

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/137/4...67aecf.jpg?v=0

Is this something that is unavoidable when publishing the Autorun files? Anything else I should watch for that might be a problem when running a course from a CD that acts differently from running it off the web?

Thanks!!

[Spectre]

Andrew, you should consider compiling the published content into an EXE. This should eliminate most (if not all) of the issues when running the content from a CD.

You will need a third party utility to do this. Two popular ones mentioned here often are HTML Baler and HTML Executable. There are others as well. The little that I have used HTML Executable, I have found it to do a nice job--giving you a number of options (perhaps too many).

Both of these products do have fully functional trial versions, so it's definitely worth a look

HTH,
Phil

[andrewkay]

Originally Posted by Spectre

Andrew, you should consider compiling the published content into an EXE. This should eliminate most (if not all) of the issues when running the content from a CD.

You will need a third party utility to do this. Two popular ones mentioned here often are HTML Baler and HTML Executable. There are others as well. The little that I have used HTML Executable, I have found it to do a nice job--giving you a number of options (perhaps too many).

Both of these products do have fully functional trial versions, so it's definitely worth a look

HTH,
Phil

Thanks Phil. I've just downloaded HTML Executable to 'evaluate' it.
In the meantime I am going to just have a launch page with instructions to just click through the Flash warning dialog.

[andrewkay]

If the course is running from a CD and the user clicks OK on the Flash Player warning dialog window and doesn't attempt to change any settings, are there any consequences or effects from taking no action?

I have run this course from a CD and just clicked OK and there seemed to be no change in the way the course runs. There are no calls to the Internet from within the course (no links etc. and attachments are in a separate folder on the CD) so my guess is clicking OK will be fine. Am I right in this assumption?

[stumpyg]

HTML Executable will actually get rid of that message. For probably 95% of what your presentation does clicking ok and doing nothing is fine. However, if you have attachments, a quiz that you want to print results, I think links inside a slide, some of those things may not work if you don't tweak your security settings. I forget specifically what exactly doesn't work but I do remember that some functionality is lost. BTW, attachments don't work in HTML Executable. At least I was never able to figure that out when I tried the program. Actually, anything that should open in a new window doesn't work in HTML Executable.

[andrewkay]

Thanks to StumpyG, Spectre, Brianosmi and others for pointing me to HTML Executable.

To completely solve my problem I had to split the course into three smaller segments consisting of two lessons each and compile those as executables so each segment is accessed separately. For the attachments I placed the pdf files into their own resource directory on the root of the CD so the users can access them as needed.

HTML Exe is a great program and we can use it for many things, but initially it seems to have solved this problem, and the test CD for the acceptance trial is on its way to the guys stationed out in that country that's on every news broadcast these days. They would probably prefer to get music CDs, but at least we are helping them to get their training completed while they are away from home.

[nzchris]

OK this is not a technical response to your issue- rather to your last comment.

How about giving the guys a "reward" for completing the quiz 100% correctly and giving them a hot song they can listen to and "evaluate"? Or perhaps a Youtube video that may lift their spirits.

"Bribery" (or desired performance rewards) awarded for perfection has had the desired effect of particpants pay more attention and take classes multiple times to achieve the 100% to get the reward.

Just a thought.

[clevewaterman]

I wish I could use the HTML Executible approach, but my client wants a CD that is cross-platform and he wants to be able to put at least 30 lectures on a single CD. Please, please fix the CD spinup issue before I get dumped by my paying customer.

[Spectre]

Originally Posted by clevewaterman

I wish I could use the HTML Executible approach, but my client wants a CD that is cross-platform and he wants to be able to put at least 30 lectures on a single CD. Please, please fix the CD spinup issue before I get dumped by my paying customer.

Cleve, have you looked at MDM Zinc, which can create both Mac and Windows EXEs? It's very pricey ($300) and looks more complicated than other tools we've suggested, but if you would like to develop a lot of cross-platform CDs with AP in the future, it might be worth a look. They do have a fully-functional trial.

HTH,
Phil

[Cyberslam]

Originally Posted by Spectre

Cleve, have you looked at MDM Zinc, which can create both Mac and Windows EXEs? It's very pricey ($300) and looks more complicated than other tools we've suggested, but if you would like to develop a lot of cross-platform CDs with AP in the future, it might be worth a look. They do have a fully-functional trial.

HTH,
Phil

Spectre, i don't think MDM is of any use as it only converts SWF files to HTML. isn't it ?