Burn a CD and autorun

[FongMan]

Hi Guys,

I am making a yearbook CD for my school and I need to know how to make the CD autorun when the disk is inserted.

The students are all designing different pages in iWeb which would be collected and sent to me to put together. So essentially I will be burning a CD with an html file to autorun, is this a possibility?

 

[miles01110]

What do you mean by "autorun" ? HTML files aren't executable files, they are viewed in a web browser. Are you wanting the HTML files to display automatically in a browser upon inserting the CD? You'll need an Applescript for that.

Also, what advantage do you gain with this over just double clicking the files to open them?

 

[Hellhammer]

AFAIK you can't force the CD to autorun, it must be selected from computer's settings to autorun a CD when inserted

 

[FongMan]

Ok I am just trying to find the best way to do this. So you think the best thing is to burn unto the CD and have a script run everything? They just run the script and the script runs the html then sure that is also great.

 

[miles01110]

Ok I am just trying to find the best way to do this. So you think the best thing is to burn unto the CD and have a script run everything? They just run the script and the script runs the html then sure that is also great.

I'm confused as to why you would need to "auto-open" a bunch of HTML files when you can just double click on them instead. Seems like a lot of trouble for not a lot of reward. You usually don't talk about "running" an HTML file, because nothing really "runs"- it's just markup...

 

[Hellhammer]

Ok I am just trying to find the best way to do this. So you think the best thing is to burn unto the CD and have a script run everything? They just run the script and the script runs the html then sure that is also great.

Is it too hard for them to click the CD and double click the HTML file to open it in Safari? I'm not sure how scripts work but that's not big thing to do anyway

 

[FongMan]

Alright I get it, no autorun no problem. I am here for advice because I clearly don't know the best thing to do. I just fix computers, I am not a programmer or webmaster and the task was just dumped on me alright with only 2 weeks to complete it. They told me what they want and my job is to see what can be done to make it happen.

If it cannot autorun then no problem. So it looks like the simplest thing to do is conjure all the pages into a single html and burn it. They will have to manually open the html, kool no problem. After all the pages are put together can the html file be renamed from index to something else without throwing off everything?

 

[miles01110]

If it cannot autorun then no problem. So it looks like the simplest thing to do is conjure all the pages into a single html and burn it. They will have to manually open the html, kool no problem. After all the pages are put together can the html file be renamed from index to something else without throwing off everything?

Are these people sending you HTML files from different sources all with the same name? If so you'll need to rename them in some meaningful way and you can burn the separate files all at once quite easily (perhaps you could put them in a folder and burn the folder to the disk). I suggest you do it this way instead of combining everything first and then burning it so you have the originals if something goes wrong.

If you combine the HTML markup into a single file, changing the file name is no problem.

 

[FongMan]

Are these people sending you HTML files from different sources all with the same name? If so you'll need to rename them in some meaningful way and you can burn the separate files all at once quite easily (perhaps you could put them in a folder and burn the folder to the disk). I suggest you do it this way instead of combining everything first and then burning it so you have the originals if something goes wrong.

If you combine the HTML markup into a single file, changing the file name is no problem.

Miles, thank you for the response. So the students are all making their own pages in iWeb or Pages from iWork. I figured the Pages files could be exported to html. They will all submit their stuff to me in their own individual folders. So once I got everybody's stuff I figured I would just create another HTML file to link all them together.

 

[miles01110]

Miles, thank you for the response. So the students are all making their own pages in iWeb or Pages from iWork. I figured the Pages files could be exported to html. They will all submit their stuff to me in their own individual folders. So once I got everybody's stuff I figured I would just create another HTML file to link all them together.

Hmm, I don't know if Pages exports to HTML (does it? It's been a while since I've used it)...? And if you use iWeb I'm not sure how you're going to combine the files into a single page, as iWeb typically doesn't make things like that easy...

 

[FongMan]

Hmm, I don't know if Pages exports to HTML (does it? It's been a while since I've used it)...? And if you use iWeb I'm not sure how you're going to combine the files into a single page, as iWeb typically doesn't make things like that easy...

Hmmm...you're right actually I am not seeing an option to save as HTML...Word can...Well when I get all their files I'll just have to play around with iWeb and see what I can do. I don't have to necessarily use iWeb to link them all together. If I have to type a bunch of HTML code and make a page from scratch then so be it.