Thanks Rob,

I get it, if they put it in their PC and open the HTML page in the Extras folder the links will be hot right?

the DVDA page would just be a list.

1) When you insert an optical disc in a PC, depending on how the PC's configured, a file on the CD/DVD called autorun.inf can start up programs on the disc or installed on the PC. Google on autostart CD or autostart DVD or autorun etc. and you'll find a bunch of info.

2) With autorun.inf out of the way, the next step is choosing what program to run... You can depend on IE being installed on most Windows machines, or to be safer, include a browser on the disc itself -- there are about a half dozen browsers that are either set up or can be set up to work off of an optical disc.

If you know the browser, you can tailor your web page coding to it, and you can turn off features in the browser that might get in the way. OTOH, if you expect the viewer to go on-line with it, the user's installed version of IE will probably be more up to date re: security patches.

3) Alternative approaches include adding a menu program -- there's 3 or 4 designed for USB sticks -- or using Flash. If you look at the portable apps you might find something else useful for your project, like VLC set up to run off a DVD, and with a couple at least, file browsers are built in.

When it comes to VLC itself, you can put it on a web page so that external links are still visible, but AFAIK to do it reliably you'll need the viewer to install an Active X control on their PC.

4) Please bear in mind that all of this is completely divorced from the DVD content itself. The most you can do on the DVD is tell everyone to look at the stuff with their PC.

if they put it in their PC and open the HTML page in the Extras folder the links will be hot right?

Right.

Rob

I came across this:

http://www.softwarepatch.com/tips/autorun.html

which gives directions, explains how to autorun an html file... Maybe someone will find it useful?

Please bear in mind that opening or starting certain types of files might trigger a security warning or may be blocked in web browsers, even though it works perfectly well on-line. While autorun.inf itself can call a specific program to open whatever file-types with, it won't work to simply say open this html, pdf, etc file. There are programs that you can put on a disc that when started via autorun.inf will open an html file for example with the default browser, just as if you double-clicked an html file. The above link uses the simplest route, calling a minimal script in a .bat file. The down side of this approach is the process isn't seamless -- there's a DOS box & the viewer does not just see the browser pop up with your html displayed.

This is very helpful, I'm beginning to see how it would work. I will follow what you suggest. Thanks. Hopefuly I willl find the best solution for this client.-bl

Scott Mendham of PCWorld did a nice step by step...

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/id;356709828;fp;512;fpid;1993318053

Thanks to all.
Bob

You'll also want to print on the surface of the disc quick simple instructions for manually accessing the content. Usually this is something like "To view the documents please double-click on D:\extras\index.html where 'D' is the drive letter of your DVD-ROM drive." This is important because you're going to start finding more and more users who have all autorun functions disabled. I do this with every PC i touch for security, safety, and sanity reasons. There isn't much that irks me more than sticking a disc in a drive and having some unexpected program start running automatically, especially when it's one that takes over the desktop. Autorun is also a very easy way for very bad software to get installed without the user realizing it. These days it's just stupid to let any disc autorun and potentially hijack the compuer.