Publish to Flash drive - Autorun

[Leslie]

One of my clients wants to distribute a presentation created in AP via Flash drive (not CD). I tried publishing to CD and checked the AutoRun feature. It didn't work when I copied the files to the Flash drive. Does Autorun work on Flash drives? If not, does it make a difference if I publish to CD vs. publish to web and copy the files to the Flash drive?

[GerryWaz]

Yes--Autorun can work on Flash drives. Just tried an AP09 course published to CD and copied the files over to the flash drive.

After I safely removed the flash drive, I re-inserted it and Vista prompted me if I wanted to play AP's Launch_Presentation.exe file, which the autorun wants to fire off.

I would suspect that some of the same caveats when publishing to CD may hold true here: http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=155

Note the link in the Articulate KB article to Microsoft. Autorun may not always work or people may have it turned off.

If you are using AP5, you may also run into some of the (Adobe) Flash security problems. I'd use AP09 for this.

As for the difference, CD are obviously cheaper if cost is a factor.

If I were distributing either via CD or Flash Drive I'd try to anticipate any problems and provide a help sheet with quick solutions to problems for people just in case.

You may also want to test this out with a few people that represents a cross-section of your audience, especially if they have different PCs and operating systems.

[3MVeach]

I use AP-5 and use the flash drive method to share my programs in development with my cohorts. I just select the flash drive as the location to publish to when publishing to CD and it works for me. Keep in mind that flash is quicker than a CD (Speed of memory verses speed of reading a disk or over a server) and if you have some interactions that are quite lengthy to load, you may be led down the wrong road. For example, I had an Engage interaction of a pyramid with 15 blocks. I had the blocks animated to come in one at a time. On my flash drive the program worked perfectly. When I finally published to our test server, things went down hill. The pyramid graphic is soooo sssllloooowwww that my testers had problems with it and complained of the several minutes it took to load.

[pbassi]

Originally Posted by GerryWaz

Yes--Autorun can work on Flash drives. Just tried an AP09 course published to CD and copied the files over to the flash drive.

After I safely removed the flash drive, I re-inserted it and Vista prompted me if I wanted to play AP's Launch_Presentation.exe file, which the autorun wants to fire off.

Hi Gerry

I tried this with vista, it gives an option to run presentation but not when the flash drive is used with windows xp. Here is a quick fix that worked for me. I thought I will post it in this thread so other users can use it if they need.

I publsihed the presentation for Cd and added two lines of script to autoun.inf created by articulate so the code looks like this: [autorun]
OPEN=Launch_Presentation.exe
action=Run Presentation
Icon=Launch_Presentation.exe
label=Presentation

Then I copied the files to flash drive. now when i unplug it and plug it again on xp machine, it gives me an option to run presentation and defaults to it.

Thanks

[GerryWaz]

Thanks for the update! Much appreciated.

[Leslie]

Originally Posted by pbassi

I publsihed the presentation for Cd and added two lines of script to autoun.inf created by articulate so the code looks like this: [autorun]
OPEN=Launch_Presentation.exe
action=Run Presentation
Icon=Launch_Presentation.exe
label=Presentation

Then I copied the files to flash drive. now when i unplug it and plug it again on xp machine, it gives me an option to run presentation and defaults to it.

I tried this, as these users have XP - added the code above to the autorun.inf file. When I plugged it into my XP machine, I did get prompted with an option to run the presentation. When I selected that option, I was prompted with the "Open With" dialog box that asked which program I want to use to open the file with. Any ideas? Also, do you do this and also put all of the files directly on the root of the Flash drive (as directed in the CD instructions)?

Thanks!
Leslie

[GerryWaz]

Originally Posted by Leslie

Also, do you do this and also put all of the files directly on the root of the Flash drive (as directed in the CD instructions)?

Yes, put it in the root of the USB flash drive.