Copyright: Copyright © Richard Low 2000-2001
Citation: Copyright © Richard Low 2000-2001


About CDStarter

CDStarter is a program to put on any CDs you create to let the user run any program, web page or document on your CD from a graphical interface. It is ideal for Autoruns on your CDs.

New in version 2.1:

- Sounds on startup and clicks

- Font and button colors

-	Background bitmap and color

-	%cdroot% variable for drive of cd

-	Adjustments to help file

-	Bug fixes

-	Can specify .ico file in config editor

-	Prepare for CD Burning sometimes didn’t copy CDStarter.exe to the directory

-	Copy to language includes all options (I hope)

-	Text height for buttons correctly calculated

Main Features:

- Create buttons to execute exe files, open web pages, show information or open files just as though you double clicked on them

- Specify an icon from a .ico file or from any executable (exe or dll) file

- Have language-specific options i.e. different greetings and descriptions but also different buttons altogether

- Display information before showing buttons e.g. for showing licence agreements

- Specify different fonts

- Use variables to be replaced by system-specific data such as system directory and language

- Shows a splash screen of any bitmap at start up for a desired length of time

- Specify the number of columns of buttons desired

- Easy to configure configuration file now with new configuration editor

CDStarter was written by Richard Low. Please send any comments, suggestions or bugs that you have found to richard@wentnet.com. I will post updates to my site, www.wentnet.com. It is Freeware so you can freely distribute it around the Internet but not for money. If you find it useful, please tell me about it to encourage me to do more!


Getting Started

To create your first script, open the config editor, cdstarterconfig.exe.  You will be presented with a new file in your system’s default language.  You can enter the title (in titlebar display), intro message (message box view before buttons shown) and welcome message.  Next, in the buttons tab, add your buttons.  To insert a button, click on the buttons menu and select insert.  Select the title, file and icon (file and icon can be selected from the disk by clicking the … next to them).

When you have finished, click on file, save and save the file in a directory with the files in to be put on cd.  It is recommended that you use the default filename cdstarter.ini.  To see your work, click file test and check it is ok.  If all is well, click Prepare Directory For CD Burning, select the icon for autorun (this must be from a file on the CD for it to work on all computers) and you have finished!  The directory can now go on the CD with its autorun.

Please add in the about information a contact to you as I quite often receive emails regarding technical support for the CD which I cannot answer.


Languages

The following languages are defined by Microsoft® Windows®:

Afrikaans

Albanian

Arabic

Armenian

Assamese

Azeri

Basque

Belarusian

Bengali

Bulgarian

Catalan

Chinese

Croatian

Czech

Danish

Dutch

English

Estonian

Faeroese

Farsi

Finnish

French

Georgian

German

Greek

Gujarati

Hebrew

Hindi

Hungarian

Icelandic

Indonesian

Italian

Japanese

Kannada

Kashmiri

Kazak

Konkani

Korean

Latvian

Lithuanian

Macedonian

Malay

Malayalam

Manipuri

Marathi

Nepali

Norwegian

Oriya

Polish

Portuguese

Punjabi

Romanian

Russian

Sanskrit

Serbian

Sindhi

Slovak

Slovenian

Spanish

Swahili

Swedish

Tamil

Tatar

Telugu

Thai

Turkish

Ukrainian

Urdu

Uzbek

Vietnamese

You can write these in any appropriate places in the configuration file. If you want all settings to be universal for all languages you do not need to enter any language information and can omit the Language Section.


Configuration File

The default file for configuration is cdstarter.ini and is in the same directory as the cdstarter.exe executable. The file can be anywhere but if not in the default position, the file must be given in the command-line as the first argument with the /c switch:

Cdstarter.exe /c somefolder\config.ini

The values are specified inside the appropriate sections in the format:

valuename=value

where valuename is the value name being set and value is the desired value. The order of values is unimportant and so is the case of the value name (i.e. title is the same as tiTLE).

You should not normally need to edit this file by hand – please use the configuration editor.


Autorun Configuration
Autorun

To make your CD autorun as you insert it, open your configuration file with the editor and click Prepare Directory for CD Burning in the file menu.  You are prompted for the autorun icon and then it creates the file and copies over the cdstarter.exe file.  This icon is used as the CD-ROM icon in My Computer for your CD.  It is not required.

Alternatively, create a file called autorun.inf and put it in the top directory of your CD. In it, type this:

[autorun]

open=cdstarter.exe /c config-file

icon=icon.ico

Be sure to replace config-file with the path and filename of your config file (if it is called cdstarter.ini and in the same directory as cdstarter.exe then you can omit this). Also, you should replace icon.ico with the path to an icon you want to display for your cd. This can be an icon file or in an executable (.exe or .dll) file. If it is in an executable file, you should state the path to the file and also the icon index in the file. For example:

Icon=cdstarter.exe,1

This will load the setup icon from the cdstarter executable, which has index 1 (all indexes start at 0).

To make CDStarter run off a CD, you must copy over the CDStarter.exe file and also cdstarter.ini.  For autorun, also copy the autorun.inf file you have just made.


Welcome Info

This information is specified in the Welcome tab of the editor.

Option	Description	Default Value	Example
Title	The title to be displayed in the title bar of the main window.	CDStarter	My Program
Intro Message	The message to be displayed before the buttons are shown.  After the message, type a ‘,’ then one of the message box constants.  This is ideal for checking that users agree to the licence agreement.	none	Please click yes to start,QUESTION
Require Yes Click	Say whether the user must click on ‘yes’ in response to the intromessage. Ideal for licence agreements. Yes for must click yes, else put No.	No	Yes
Welcome Message	The message to be displayed in the welcome text box at the top.	Please select the program to run below:	Please click a button below:
Welcome Sound	A sound to be played as CDStarter starts up, while it displays the splash screen.  Only wav files supported.	none	Welcome.wav
Welcome Font	The font for the welcome message.  You can specify font, size, weight and color.	MS Sans Serif, Regular, 14, Black	Arial, 24, Bold, Red


General
General Tab

Options	Description	Default Value	Example
Timeout	The timeout in minutes until CDStarter will close from first opening. For no timeout, set to 0.	0	10
Column Height	Defines the number of buttons to be displayed in a column.	5	3
Splash Bitmap	The path to a bitmap file (.bmp) to be displayed as the splash screen.	none	images\splash.bmp
Splash Delay	The time in milliseconds that the splash screen is shown for.	1500	2000
Splash Border	Width of a border (in pixels) to be drawn around the splash screen. For none, set to 0.  Please select the color of it by clicking the Color button.	0	3
About	Information to add to the about box.  Please add a contact to you in here as I quite often receive emails regarding technical support for the CD which I cannot answer.	none	About my program
Background Bitmap	The bitmap to display for the background of the main window	none	Background.bmp
Style	The style of the background bitmap.  Center places the picture in the middle of the window; tiled repeats it across the entire space; stretch stretches it to fill the window and left puts it in the top left corner.	Center	Tiled
Background Color	The background color of the window if there is no background.  This is also the color of the background of button and the about box.	System default


Buttons
Buttons Tab

Options	Description	Default Value	Example
Title	The text to be displayed beneath this button or on it if there is no icon.	Button	Click here to run my program
File	The command to be executed when the user clicks on this button. Please see File Option for more information.	none	programs\myprog.exe
Sound	The sound to be played when the user clicks on this button.	none	sounds\button3.wav
Icon	The icon to be loaded for this button. With no icon defined, the Title text is displayed on the button rather than below it. Please see Icon Option for more information.	file.exe,1	programs\myprog.exe,1
Close On Click	Say whether CDStarter is closed when the user clicks on this button.  Yes for closes, No for not.	no	Yes


File and Icon Options
The File and Icon Options

The file and icon options can contain more things than just a simple path. They can contain one of the following variables, to be replaced with the value depending on the user’s system.

Variable	Description	Example
%ROOT%	The drive that contains the user’s system without a trailing backslash.	D:
%WINDIR%	The windows directory (including the drive given by %ROOT%) of the user’s system without a trailing backslash.	D:\winnt
%SYSDIR%	The system directory (including the drive given by %ROOT%) of the user’s system without a trailing backslash.	D:\winnt\system32
%LOCALE%	The locale ID of the user’s system. Please see Locale IDs for more information.	1033
%LANGUAGE%	The language of the user’s system. Please see Languages for more information.	DUTCH
%WINVERSION%	The major version of Windows® that the user is running. It could be 4 for Windows® 9x or NT or 5 for Windows® 2000. Please note: cannot be 3 as CDStarter requires 32 bit Windows®.	4 or 5
%WINPRODUCT%	The product version that the user is running. Either win for Windows® 9x or NT for NT or 2000.	NT or win
%CDROOT%	The drive letter that CDStarter is running from.  When testing, this is the drive that you are running CDStarter.exe from	E:

These can be useful to put programs for different operating systems or languages in different folders and have CDStarter automatically find the right files.

For the file option, you can specify an executable file, any file that would open normally if you double clicked on it in Explorer or any folder that will be opened by Explorer. You can also put a web address in the form http://www.domain.com/document.html to be opened in the default browser.  For example, you could specify a Word Document to be opened by Word or a directory for the user to browse. For any programmers, CDStarter calls the ShellExecute API function and if that fails, WinExec.

If you leave the option blank, nothing will be executed – it will play the sound and close if Close on Click is set.  If you put just a \, the directory with CDStarter.exe in it will be opened in Explorer.

Another feature is you can have a message box shown whenever a user clicks on a button.  To use this, say \mb\the message,ICON.  ICON can take any of the four message box constants.

For the icon option, you can give an icon (.ico) file or a reference to one in any executable (.exe or .dll) file. This would be given using the path to the executable file and then the index of the icon in the resource. A comma is used to separate them. For example, to load the explorer icon out of explorer.exe, you could use:

%WINDIR%\explorer.exe,1

The indexes for icons start at zero. Please note: in the CDStarter.exe icon resource there is a setup icon which you can use with the following:

cdstarter.exe,1


Locale IDs

The following locale IDs are defined by Microsoft® Windows® and can be returned by the %LOCALE% variable.

Language	ID
Afrikaans	1078
Albanian	1052
Arabic - U.A.E.	14337
Arabic - Bahrain	15361
Arabic - Algeria	5121
Arabic - Egypt	3073
Arabic - Iraq	2049
Arabic - Jordan	11265
Arabic - Kuwait	13313
Arabic - Lebanon	12289
Arabic - Libya	4097
Arabic - Morocco	6145
Arabic - Oman	8193
Arabic - Qatar	16385
Arabic - Saudia Arabia	1025
Arabic - Syria	10241
Arabic - Tunisia	7169
Arabic - Yemen	9217
Basque	1069
Belarusian	1059
Bulgarian	1026
Catalan	1027
Chinese	4
Chinese - PRC	2052
Chinese - Hong Kong	3076
Chinese - Singapore	4100
Chinese - Taiwan	1028
Croatian	1050
Czech	1029
Danish	1030
Dutch	1043
Dutch - Belgium	2067
English	9
English - Australia	3081
English - Belize	10249
English - Canada	4105
English - Ireland	6153
English - Jamaica	8201
English - New Zealand	5129
English - South Africa	7177
English - Trinidad	11273
English - United Kingdom	2057
English - United States	1033
Estonian	1061
Farsi	1065
Finnish	1035
Faeroese	1080
French - Standard	1036
French - Belgium	2060
French - Canada	3084
French - Luxembourg	5132
French - Switzerland	4108
Gaelic - Scotland	1084
German - Standard	1031
German - Austrian	3079
German - Lichtenstein	5127
German - Luxembourg	4103
German - Switzerland	2055
Greek	1032
Hebrew	1037
Hindi	1081
Hungarian	1038
Icelandic	1039
Indonesian	1057
Italian - Standard	1040
Italian - Switzerland	2064
Japanese	1041
Korean	1042
Latvian	1062
Lithuanian	1063
Macedonian	1071
Malay - Malaysia	1086
Maltese	1082
Norwegian - Bokmål	1044
Polish	1045
Portuguese - Standard	2070
Portuguese - Brazil	1046
Raeto-Romance	1047
Romanian	1048
Romanian - Moldova	2072
Russian	1049
Russian - Moldova	2073
Serbian - Cyrillic	3098
Setsuana	1074
Slovenian	1060
Slovak	1051
Sorbian	1070
Spanish - Standard	1034
Spanish - Argentina	11274
Spanish - Bolivia	16394
Spanish - Chile	13322
Spanish - Columbia	9226
Spanish - Costa Rica	5130
Spanish - Dominican Republic	7178
Spanish - Ecuador	12298
Spanish - Guatemala	4106
Spanish - Honduras	18442
Spanish - Mexico	2058
Spanish - Nicaragua	19466
Spanish - Panama	6154
Spanish - Peru	10250
Spanish - Puerto Rico	20490
Spanish - Paraguay	15370
Spanish - El Salvador	17418
Spanish - Uruguay	14346
Spanish - Venezuela	8202
Sutu	1072
Swedish	1053
Swedish - Finland	2077
Thai	1054
Turkish	1055
Tsonga	1073
Ukranian	1058
Urdu - Pakistan	1056
Vietnamese	1066
Xhosa	1076
Yiddish	1085
Zulu	1077


Example

Included in this distribution, there is an example configuration file. It uses different languages and shows use of some of the variables available for the file and icon options. The file is copied below:

[languages]

default=ENGLISH

available=FRENCH,GERMAN

[options]

title=CDStarter Example

welcome=Please try the buttons below.

buttons=8

column=5

bitmap=wentnet logo.bmp

splashdelay=1000

uselanguage=1

about=This is the sample file.

bckgndcolor=c0c0c0

background=background.bmp

backgroundstyle=tile

requireintroyes=0

intromessage=Welcome to CDStarter! Please click on the buttons below to see what CDStarter can do.

timeout=10

splashbordercolor=000000

splashborderwidth=1

welcomestyle=

welcomesize=20

welcomeface=Times New Roman

welcomefontcolor=000000

sound=

[0]

title=View configuration file

icon=%windir%\notepad.exe,0

file=cdstarter.ini

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[1]

title=Explore this folder

icon=cdstarter.exe,0

file=\

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=808000

style=i,u

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[2]

title=Say hello

icon=,0

file=\mb\hello!,information

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000080

style=

size=20

face=Courier New

sound=

[3]

title=Explore Windows

icon=%windir%\explorer.exe,1

file=%windir%\explorer.exe %windir%

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[4]

title=View my website

icon=%sysdir%\shell32.dll,106

file=http://www.wentnet.com/

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[5]

title=See the vars

icon=%sysdir%\shell32.dll,41

file=%root%\%winproduct%\%winversion%\%locale%\%language%\file.exe

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[6]

title=Explore your system drive

icon=%windir%\explorer.exe,10

file=%windir%\explorer.exe /e

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=ff0000

style=

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[7]

title=Congratulations!

icon=congrats.ico,0

file=

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=800000

style=

size=20

face=Arial

sound=applause.wav

[options,FRENCH]

title=Un Exemple de CDStarter

welcome=Please try the buttons below.

buttons=8

column=5

bitmap=wentnet logo.bmp

splashdelay=1000

uselanguage=1

about=This is the sample file.

bckgndcolor=c0c0c0

background=background.bmp

backgroundstyle=tile

requireintroyes=0

intromessage=Bienvenue à CDStarter! Please click on the buttons below to see what CDStarter can do.

timeout=10

splashbordercolor=000000

splashborderwidth=1

welcomestyle=i

welcomesize=16

welcomeface=Times New Roman

welcomefontcolor=000000

sound=

[0,FRENCH]

title=View configuration file

icon=%windir%\notepad.exe,0

file=cdstarter.ini

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[1,FRENCH]

title=Explore this folder

icon=cdstarter.exe,0

file=\

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[2,FRENCH]

title=Dit bonjour

icon=,0

file=\mb\bonjour!,information

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[3,FRENCH]

title=Explore Windows

icon=%windir%\explorer.exe,1

file=%windir%\explorer.exe %windir%

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[4,FRENCH]

title=View my website

icon=%sysdir%\shell32.dll,106

file=http://www.wentnet.com/

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[5,FRENCH]

title=See the vars

icon=%sysdir%\shell32.dll,41

file=%root%\%winproduct%\%winversion%\%locale%\%language%\file.exe

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[6,FRENCH]

title=Explore your system drive

icon=%windir%\explorer.exe,10

file=%windir%\explorer.exe /e

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[7,FRENCH]

title=Congratulations!

icon=congrats.ico,0

file=

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=applause.wav

[options,GERMAN]

title=Bespiel von CDStarter

welcome=Please try the buttons below.

buttons=8

column=5

bitmap=wentnet logo.bmp

splashdelay=1000

uselanguage=1

about=This is the sample file.

bckgndcolor=c0c0c0

background=background.bmp

backgroundstyle=tile

requireintroyes=0

intromessage=Wilkommen bei CDStarter! Please click on the buttons below to see what CDStarter can do.

timeout=10

splashbordercolor=000000

splashborderwidth=1

welcomestyle=b

welcomesize=16

welcomeface=Times New Roman

welcomefontcolor=000000

sound=

[0,GERMAN]

title=View configuration file

icon=%windir%\notepad.exe,0

file=cdstarter.ini

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[1,GERMAN]

title=Explore this folder

icon=cdstarter.exe,0

file=\

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[2,GERMAN]

title=Sag Hallo!

icon=,0

file=\mb\hallo!,information

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[3,GERMAN]

title=Explore Windows

icon=%windir%\explorer.exe,1

file=%windir%\explorer.exe %windir%

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[4,GERMAN]

title=View my website

icon=%sysdir%\shell32.dll,106

file=http://www.wentnet.com/

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[5,GERMAN]

title=See the vars

icon=%sysdir%\shell32.dll,41

file=%root%\%winproduct%\%winversion%\%locale%\%language%\file.exe

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[6,GERMAN]

title=Explore your system drive

icon=%windir%\explorer.exe,10

file=%windir%\explorer.exe /e

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=

[7,GERMAN]

title=Congratulations!

icon=congrats.ico,0

file=

closeonclick=0

fontcolor=000000

style=b

size=20

face=Arial

sound=applause.wav


Message Box Constants

The following message box constants can be used whenever a message box is being shown to specify the icon:

Constant	Icon
INFORMATION
STOP
QUESTION
EXCLAMATION