CDMenuPro

Tutorial

Menu Style Guide

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The style guide has been designed to help you avoid making any major mistakes during the design process and to help you create a menu that will run smoothly on all Win 32 systems.

Folder and file names

The CD joliet file system permits you to us path and file names that are no longer than 64 characters. This means that it's important to avoid long names. You will find more detailed information on this aspect here...

Avoid using long folder and file names.

If you want to use your menu to start programs that have been allocated a run-time parameter, it's important to avoid using empty spaces in the path or file names as this can lead to problems.

Avoid using empty spaces for folder and file names

The Menu's window size

PC systems (notebooks) still exist that use a VGA screen resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. If you want to distribute the menu publicly, it's important that the menu's window size does not exceed the values mentioned above.

The size of the window should not exceed 640 x 480 pixels.

Image Format

It's now possible to use Gif and Jpg image formats on almost all PC systems. Only very old Win95 systems that have not been updated with a service pack and/or do not have Internet Explorer installed (version 4.01 and above) will not be able to support these image formats. If you think that your menu will be used on old systems such as the one described above, then you should use either Bmp or Bti formats only if you want your menu to be displayed correctly.
Please note: If either Internet Explorer 4.01 or above or one of the MS office products has been installed on a Win95 system, it will be able to support all image formats.

If you want your menu to be displayed correctly on old and non-updated Win95 systems, do not use Gif and Jpg image formats.

Image objects

Ever since CDMenuPro version 3.0, it's been possible to load additional image objects for the background image into the menu window. This only makes sense, however, in cases where the menu features several menu pages and the extra image objects are intended to give each of these menu pages its own individual appearance. Otherwise, it makes more sense to integrate the image object into the background image using your graphics software. This will save both resource memory and loading time.

In order to shorten loading times and to save resource memory, image objects should be used sparingly.

Fonts

While it's possible to choose whatever font you want for the CDMenuPro interface while you are creating it, this font will only be displayed correctly on other PCs provided the one you have chosen is installed on them. This means, then, that it's important to use fonts that are available on all PC systems:
Arial, Helvetica, Sans Serif, Times Roman, Verdana

CDMenuPro version 5.20 and above
From CDMenuPro 5.2 Business License version and above it is possible to embed TrueType-Fonts and OpenFonts into the menu application during the compilation process. (Applies to buttons, text objects and tool tips) This enables the tooltip, button and text objects to be displayed on the target PC in exactly the same font that you have used for the design even when the font is not already installed on the computer. Only fonts without licensing restrictions, however, can be embedded.

Tip: You can use your graphics software to create whatever text style you want and then integrate this into the background image.

AVI videos

The same codec with which the AVI was saved (driver for compressing and decompressing) has to be installed on the target PC otherwise the AVI video cannot be played. Only the following codecs are available on all PC systems: (If you would like to know more, please read this...)

• RLE: Microsoft RLE Codec
• IV32: Indeo Codec R3.2 by Intel
• CVID: Cinepak Codec Radius Inc.
• CRAM: Microsoft Video 1
• Uncompressed: Uncompressed AVIs don't need a Codec and can be played on all systems.

Only use AVI videos that use one of the codecs mentioned above.

Sound Files

CDMenuPro supports the following sound formats: wav, mid, mp2, mp3. The corresponding Audio Codec (compression - decompression driver) must be installed on the target PC for the sound file to work. The codecs for mp2 and mp3 files will probably not be installed on old non-updated Win95/Win98 systems.

If you expect CDMenuPro to be used on older, non-updated Win95/98 PCs, you should not use the mp2 and mp3 sound formats.