Skip to main content
D
dchilder
Inspiring
July 19, 2007
Question

Unknown publisher message

  • July 19, 2007
  • 2 replies
  • 2258 views
Been lurking in the forums for a while - and I've found many useful responses already. I've got a question that I've seen asked, but never really answered, so I'll throw it out again.

We're publishing standalone EXE files from Captivate 2.0 for our people to use. We're linking to them through a separate customized html page (using EXE rather than html/swf for now because we have video files embedded, and the EXE simplifies things for now by creating one file rather than multiple files per movie - several other reasons, but we've played with everything as options). For now, the EXE files are located in the same folder as the html page.

We briefly tried linking to the EXE files through hyperlinks in a Word document. This triggered a single dialog box asking if the user really wanted to open the file. We're changing this launch page to an html page for several reasons. Unfortunately, when linking directly to the EXE files from our new launch page, we get two dialog boxes, which is pretty inconvenient. The two messages are:

1) Do you want to run or save this file? (of course - that is why we linked to it...) --> Run
2) The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software? (Unknown publisher error) --> Run

First, is there any way to get around one or both of these dialogs? It seems to me to be a Windows and/or browser security issue, but I can't seem to get around the issue.

Second, if I can't get around both of these dialogs, has anyone been able to use a digital certificate to prevent the Unknown Publisher error? If so, any good resources on how to do this?

Thanks in advance!

David

Update:

I think I found a decent solution for this. I am using MenuBuilder, making relative links to the executable files (link to the file on your computer, then delete everything but the filename to make it relative to the MenuBuilder file's location), and then exporting the Menu Builder as an EXE file. This seems to eliminate all of the dialog boxes... It works like magic from my computer, but I haven't yet deployed it, downloaded all the files from the Web, and then tried it. We'll see...

Thanks for the suggestions.

David
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    J
    jbradley88
    Participating Frequently
    July 20, 2007
    There's no getting around the warning prompts when trying to access .exe files remotely... it's an intentional effort by Microsoft to alert the user to the dangers of running "untrusted" executables.

    Hopefully, your users aren't accessing the files using Windows Vista, or they'll likely receive yet another warning from Vista's User Account Control. That dumb thing seems to be designed to intentionally annoy you at every possible opportunity. :)
    D
    dchilderAuthor
    Inspiring
    July 20, 2007
    Thank you for the responses. Yes, I agree that the html/swf will be the better option for us down the road - this is more for a short term phase of our project.

    We aren't accessing the EXE files directly from the Web - they are downloading them to their own computers, along with the html file we've created to launch the files, and then accessing them locally for classes. We've developed a custom LMS-type of application to host the files - the next version of that app will let them download everything in a packaged zipped format, so we'll use the html/swf outputs at that time. It was just too confusing for our users to use multiple file types (swf, html, flv video, etc.), when the EXE made it simple to download and use.

    For the present, however, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to avoid our extra dialog boxes... I believe the fact that they are downloading the files from the web may contribute to the problem, but I get the same message when I access the local files I've created through an html link.

    Any other recommendations, or does anyone have any experience digitally signing Flash .exe files so that we could be a trusted publisher? I'm hoping that this could be a partial solution - we should have a valid certificate, but I'm not sure if I can do it with Captivate files.

    Thanks,

    David
    CatBandit
    CatBandit
    Inspiring
    July 20, 2007
    You are right, David, the messages are from your browser and have little to do with Captivate except as pertains to your choice of executable output.

    Bottom line, if you are using executable files as output, they should not (ever) be run from a web location. The EXE (or "standalone") output is for local use only and was never intended to be used by linking through a HTML document.

    For best results, I would think that links to your executable files (on a LAN or local machine) should be created by standard desktop shortcuts showing the complete path to the executable file - not through any other document.

    I would argue with your conclusion that SWF/HTML output should be ignored and EXE used ... but it sounds like you have made up your mind on that issue, so all I will say is "best of luck to you".

    HTH
    .
    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices