By Koen 'RockinFewl' Mannaerts, WhirlyWiryWeb.com, Nov 2001.
Can be freely used as long as proper credit is given.
Home of ShellExe is at the Whirly Wiry Web.
This About page displays if no documents were passed to ShellExe. For correct usage, see below.
ShellExe launches documents with their associated viewer application. Used in autorun.inf, ShellExe allows to automatically open a document as soon as a user puts your CD in.
ShellExe accepts a queue of documents to open. If the user hasn't the proper viewer for a document installed, ShellExe attempts to open the next document.
E.g. you can start with a PDF document. For the case the user hasn't Acrobat Reader installed, you can provide a HTML file. Then for the rare case the user hasn't a Web browser installed, you can provide a TXT file.Smaller than 35KB, ShellExe is among the leanest document launchers available today.
Everything ShellExe needs is built-in. It will run on anything from Windows NT3.51 and 95 on. Internet Explorer is not required. This will make your CD's autorun work on virtually all Windows platforms.
Here's the contents of a sample autorun.inf file.
[autorun] open = shellexe.exe intro.avi intro.htm intro.txt
Modify it to make it match your document types and names.
In this sample, ShellExe will first attempt to
load intro.avi. If that fails (the user doesn't have an AVI viewer), ShellExe will load the intro.htm file.
If also that fails -- the user doesn't have a Web browser associated --, ShellExe will load the intro.txt document.
It's a good idea to end with a file that everyone can see, even on the simplest system. A text file is always okay.
Write autorun.inf, shellexe.exe and all document files referred, to the root of the CD.
Done.
Can be freely used as long as proper credit is given.
Home of ShellExe is at the Whirly Wiry Web.