There are many authoring packages out there with an autorun maker feature among other things. However they are intended for professional designers and require much more knowledge than a simple autorun maker. Besides, such software is rather pricy as it offers many tools "under one roof". Of course, if your design needs go beyond autorun menus, investing time and money into a professional package may be okey. But if you're looking for an inexpensive tool only for autorun menus, you should consider alternatives. I recommend Autoplay Menu Designer.
AutoPlay Menu Designer is an ad hoc autorun maker utility, which makes an affordable and easy solution to your autorun menu needs. When you run the application, it opens a wizard where you can easily choose a template for the menu and enter project properties: output directory, window style, size, position and background, select the file to execute when the user loads the disk into the disk drive, enable splash screen and localization support.
Once the project properties are set, the chosen layout opens in the designer window of the autorun maker. Now you can add your own content in much the same way as you would do it making a presentation in PowerPoint. Just add annotations and enter your own text, drag and drop shapes, pictures, as well as buttons, hotspots and links to build navigation through the menu. Then add interactive events to objects to run applications, open files, links, play audio on mouse clicks. For example, you can set a button to display a tooltip, change caption, play sound when the user places the mouse over, and open folders, files and webpages in the browser on the mouse click. Objects can be rearranged on the menu simply by dragging them with the mouse to the desired place.
It's interesting to note that the autorun maker provides helpful options to edit pictures that have been added to the menu. You can, for example, use the built-in hue, saturation and lightness filters to enhance color and tone of the images. The program also lets you apply various visual effects to objects. For example, you can add various types of shadow effects, blend the object with the background and change its transparency.
When the menu looks exactly as you want, you use the autorun maker to package the menu for CD-ROM. The package contains a standalone AutorunMenu player and resource files. The final step is burn this package to a disk using the built-in CD recording tool. That's pretty much all you do.
If you are looking for an autorun maker for creating autorun menus for software installation disks, you should look at Autoplay Menu Designer. As you see, using this autorun maker is simple and quick. In addition to templates, the application will let you create a menu from scratch.