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Deciding on your Interface

Applies To:

All Autorun Packages

Decide on what kind of interface you want.

First you need to decide on the type of interface you with to have. Generally there are two broad categories of interface, menu and immediate.

The most widely used, and most widely accepted by users, is a menu interface. This menu presents to the user the various options they have. These options might be to open a document, start a particular package (or install software), go to your internet site, and even to exit the menu without chosing any of the options at this time.

This kind of interface also suits any application where significant time might be taken up starting any of the elements. The autorun software should load as quickly as possible, however if the user chooses to start any process off that system it can be expected that this process might take longer to load.

A menu interface also suits situations where you cannot rely on the existence of software on the user's machine. An example of this is, if your CD contains a Adobe Acrobat file. You may find that you cannot expect the user to have Acrobat on their system, they may need to install it. A menu can give the user the option to insall the latest version of Acrobat as available on the CD.

An immediately launching interface usually is simply a means to an end. This is useful if you simply wish to open a document on the user's machine quickly. This is often the case on many modern CDs which the author has created a web interface for (that it, you browse the CD via HTML pages in your browser). In this case it is usually assumed that the user has a browser, and all you wish to do is utilise software which will open your index page in the user's browser, possible while flashing your logo on screen.