Vikki Dawson May 1, 2001

AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0 is a terrific tool for creating CD front ends for software products, files, catalogs or pretty much whatever you are distributing on CD or DVD ROM.

Key Features

• Multiple Page menus
• Interactive objects
• Built-in actions
• Supports all 32-bit Windows platforms including Win 95/98/NT 4.0 and Windows 2000.
• Multilingual Support
• Avi video object support
• Scrolling text boxes
• Assign multiple actions to an event
• New actions include:
  • Hide Object
  • Show Object
  • Audio Play/Pause/Stop
  • Minimize Window
  • Restore Window
  • Avi Video Play/Pause/Stop
  • Modify INI File
  • Read from INI File
  • Read from Registry
  • Write to Registry
  • Search for File
  • Yes/No Dialog
  • Message Box
  • Input Box
  • and more.....
• Up to 1000 Pages can be included in a project
• Object Browser
• Project Preview
• Virtual CD Layout
• Time sensitive expire
• and more.....

That is one heck of a list of features! AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0 delivers what it promises.

Now before I go any further I would like to mention that although AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0 is an *autorun* front end it is not a miracle worker. Windows 3.1 and Macintosh systems do not recognize auto-run when you insert a CD into the ROM drive. Therefore, the AutoPlay Menu will not auto-run on those systems.

When you open AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0 you are greeted with a dialog to get you started or keep you going on a project.

If you are starting a new project you can choose to create an empty project so that you can create your own custom menu or you can choose one of the pre-designed templates. There is a button in the bottom left corner of this interface that will take you to the AutoPlay web site to check for new templates that are available for download.

Once you have made your design decision it is reflected in the RAD (Rapid Application Development) environment interface. While you're at the AutoPlay site you might want to check out the great tutorials they have there.

Under the File menu you will find a menu item for Preferences. This is where you set up your working environment.

The Object menu gives you control to add items to your menu. The Panels for the Object>Properties menu are below and are pretty much self explanatory.

The Page menu takes you to Page>Properties. This is where you set up the appearance and actions of the pages in your menu.

There are Action tabs for Object Properties, Project Properties and Page Properties. Actions allow you to cause certain things to happen when events happen. For instance you can set programs to run, open documents, read information from the system, jump to pages, play sound and multimedia files and more.

Although everything is important when creating your menu, the Project Settings is where you will be doing most of your actual set up. The Project settings are where you control the size of the menu's window, whether you will have a title bar, etc. These options are shown in the screenshot below of the General tab.

You can have a Splash screen and a Credits screen.

The Startup Page tab allows you to specify different start pages depending on the user's system language. This allows you to distribute your projects in many different languages.

The Intro Video tab allows you to show an AVI movie before the menu appears. You can configure the movie to run full screen or a specified window size and well you can set the movie to either size option.

The Security tab helps you to generate a list of serial numbers or unlock keys that can be used with the Get Password action of AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0. You can set the menu to expire in a number of days.

The Actions panel is where you set the actions you want to occur on your menu startup and shutdown.

From the View menu you can get to the Object Browser. This is really a neat option to have. Being able to see all your objects and set their properties is a powerful tool. The Object Browser shows all the objects on a page. As you can see you can lock and unlock objects and hide or show objects.

From the Tools menu you can customize the AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0 interface and you can create a Zip file of your project. The objects that are in your project are listed as shown in the dialog above.

There are a lot of great things you can do with AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0 and do them very quickly and easily. When IndigoRose says "RAD" they really mean it. This is one powerful application.

Head on over to IndigoRose and check it out and while you're there download the 30 day trial version.

Copyright 2001, Vikki Dawson, All Rights Reserved