Course Designer 4

If you would like to run CD4 on both the old and new computer – yes, you will need two licenses. But if you simply want to transfer your license from the older computer to the new one, click here to get a new activation code for that license:

First, install CD4 on the new computer and run it. The application will start in its usual “Try before you buy” mode and will create a “Request Code” that is specific to that particular computer. Once you have that Request Code, you can either wait for Course Designer to prompt you to obtain the Activation Code necessary to transfer your permanent license to the new computer OR you can click here:

Not at this time.

There is no set maximum. But the license server does monitor for abuses. For example, you and a friend cannot keep transferring a license between your two machines. Abuse of the license may result in cancellation of the license.

CD4 courses are stored, like many other things, on your computer in files and folders. You are responsible for copying these files to your new computer. Tip: store your courses on a cloud Drive (like DropBox or Google Driver, etc) and they will seem to transfer seamlessly to your next computer, plus they will be backed up.

There are not currently any formal training materials. But as people have asked from time to time how to do something, impromptu video captures have been created to show them how to do it. You can go to the HupAndRunning YouTube channel and see those.

The application also has helpful suggestions available under the “Help” pulldown menu when you run the application.

If you still have a question on how to do something, email supportid@coursedesigner.com and maybe a quick video demo will be added to the YouTube channel ^_^

No. Your CD4 license, like CRCD3 and other previous versions, is good forever or until the operating system either doesn’t support it anymore OR you decide to upgrade that license to a future version (CD5) for a reduced fee. There are no extra fees at this time.

At the time of this writing – yes. In addition, development of Course Designer 5 is also in progress.

Starting with Course Designer 4.34, the application will check for updates on startup and will direct you to the Download page to obtain the next version.

No. But it is recommended because each minor release – for example going from version 4.33 to version 4.34 – contains not only bug fixes, but often some new features.

Courses will be unaffected. It’s a little trickier if you are updating from version 3 to version 4, or from version 4 to version 5. That’s because each major version of Course Designer (1, 2000, 3, 4 and eventually 5) has its own file format it uses to store a course. But, newer versions of Course Designer are knowledgeable about dealing with old file formats, aka CD4 can read/write version 3 (aka CRCD3) files or convert a version 3 file to version 4. Version 5 will continue this tradition of compatibility and supporting existing users.

One reason is that CD4 is awfully good at what it does, so updates only tend to happen once or twice a year.

Another reason is that CD4 is what is known as a “niche” program. There just aren’t enough potential buyers of the software in this niche to support even one full time programmer. So at this time, all Course Designer development is done on a part-time basis.

Probably. Desktop computers are not dead and are still usually the best way to get productive work (including course design) efficiently done. But… tablets (and phones) continue to increase in capability to the point people are getting many if not most of their routine computer tasks done on those platforms.

In addition, at one point in time, running Course Designer on a phone or table platform would have required a complete rewrite of the application. Fortunately, fairly recent advances in computer science are making it significantly easier to migrate even niche applications like Course Designer to new platforms.

Absolutely! Please start a dialog by emailing suggestionid@coursedesigner.com

These are intermediate versions of the application that are used to test a feature or address a critical bug fix needed before the next minor release.

Beta versions are considered to be pretty stable. They will not contain all of the features of the next major release.

No, you don’t. Your CRCD3 license is good forever until – the operating system either doesn’t support it anymore OR you decide to upgrade that license to CD4 for a reduced fee. As of this writing, Windows 11 still supports both CRCD3 and older versions of Course Designer. It still runs on Mac OS’s (as a PC program) if you use CrossOver or some other Wine-based help based program or PC emulator. If you decide however that you would like to upgrade, click here: