Giving WixUIExtension dialogs a slightly more modern look - wix

I feel that the dialogs provided by the WixUIExtension have a look that remembers me of Windows 95.
Example screenshot from an example of the WiX Tutorial built with WiX 3.10 (*cough* on Win 7):
(I know how to replace the bitmaps.) The icons (disks, folders) have 16 colors, text boxes and combo boxes look quite old.
Maybe I missed something obvious.
Is there a way to give these dialogs a slightly more modern look without rewriting them from scratch?

You can replace the bitmaps and icons but the controls and their appearance are part of MSI and can't be changed. That's one of the reasons I use Burn bundles even when I don't have a chain -- it requires coding but the UI can be completely controlled.

Related

Change style of PivotItemHeader

I currently try to change the visual style of my pivot control in UWP.
I would like to change the plain default style of "just text" to something like this:
This is just an example I quickly found on the web. But it is a good representation of what I want to achieve.
I would like to make the pivot items to look like they are tabs.
They should be visibly seperated from another and when one of the items is selected I want to make it visually stand out from the others.
I'm really new to styling controls. I actually just started to read about it yesterday. But it really helps to make an app visually interesting instead of just the plain default styles.
I would really appreciate some help or guidance here :)
Greetings :)
We can modify the PivotHeaderItem default style to implement the effect. Here is also a similar thread that describes how to achieve it : Pivot Header style
Please note that: the PivotHeaderItem default style is based on the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 10, Version 1511 (Windows SDK version 10.0.10586.0). If your app target on other version, the styles and resources may be have different values. But the approach to implement the effect is similar. You can find the corresponding source in the path of your Windows SDK installation such as:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\DesignTime\CommonConfiguration\Neutral\UAP\10.0.16299.0\Generic.

Full Background in Pages Install / Uninstall

I'm new with NSIS, and the problems i have, the people of this forum can help me, and now... all the project is OK.
But now... i have one small problem... in Pages (Install / Uninstall) i have a Left Image... all OK... but... ¿Is possible the BMP can stay at the backround with 100% width and height?
The example is here:
How is the form to put the Background BMP image in Pages?
Thanks for all friends! ;)
You can either use the product advertised in your screenshot to build that NSIS installer for you, or create your own custom UI with a resource editor of your liking. It's probably a good starting point to take a look at the UIs that come with NSIS, open their executables in a resource editor.
As author of Graphical Installer I can say it is more complicated than it looks :)
What you need is to create full sized picture, set it's content and refresh it on each page.
The picture you see on the Welcome/Finish page is not present on other pages so you need to create it manually (during runtime or via UI file - based on your preferences).
It looks simple but there is really much more to do and some serious NSIS skills are required.

WiX Minimal UI shows first lines empty with Arabic text

I'm using WiX 3.7 I managed to get WiX Minimal UI to work properly following the instructions from http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/wixui/wixui_dialog_library.html
When I used Arabic Licence file is shown incorrectly (first lines are blank), unless user scrolls the text area in which case the text starts to look as expected.
I already tried the advice from the page http://wixtoolset.org/documentation/manual/v3/wixui/wixui_customizations.html
Open your RTF file in WordPad and save it from there in order to remove the complex RTF content from the file. After saving it, rebuild your MSI.
My current approach is to write a Custom EULA Dialog, but I would prefer to stay with WiX UI Minimal builtin Dialog... Have you experienced this problem? Do you know how to overcome it?

Can I change all my installer dialogs' dimensions in one spot, using WiX?

I'm building an installer using WiX and I want all my installer's dialogs to be larger than the default dimensions. Is there a central spot where I can set a width and height for all dialogs in my installer? If not, is there at least a way to change the built-in dialogs' dimensions?
In WiX v3.6 you can use localization files to change size and location of dialogs and controls. See my blog post for details. It's still a lot of work to change everything.

Reference for possible String ID's in WixLocalization?

I am finding WIX to be nearly impenetrable.
I want to customize the text in various dialogs in the WixUI_FeatureTree.
I've seen Customizing Text in the standard WIX Dialogs, so I get the basic idea that I need a .wxl file, and I need to fill it with <String ...> elements. But what Id's are available?
Q1: where is the list of Id's for the various supported strings?
side comment:
Am I just looking in the wrong place? I'm looking in the Wix doc, but nothing is obvious. Figuring out this Wix stuff is much harder than I expected it to be. It is not easily discoverable, at all.
You basically have to download the WiX source code, and go through it's WXL files, find the text you want to override, then use that ID.
The code is the reference.
Hang in there. WiX/MSI starts to make sense at about your fourth installer.