I've got some verbose text that's being truncated on my WelcomeDlg:
Clearly there's loads of room in the dialog for the extra lines of text, but the text box is too small. How can I make it larger?
You can take a look at the source for the WelcomeDlg to see what is happening. The text you are displaying is the <Control Id="Description" .... />, but you'll notice there is also another text field below it for describing a patch if it is being applied.
You can customize the WelcomeDlg by following the instructions in the last couple of section of this page in the manual. Here are some quick steps:
Copy the fragment for the WelcomeDlg into your own project from the Wix sources.
Change the Id attribute of the Dialog tag to be unique. You can then make any changes to the dialog you need (such as making the patch description field smaller and the description field taller).
Copy the fragment that defines your UI sequence from the Wix sources into your project. If you were using the WixUI_InstallDir sequence you would copy this file.
In your custom dialog sequence file you need to change the Id attribute of the UI tag to be unique and any references to WelcomeDlg to the Id you put on your custom WelcomeDlg.
In your main package change your <UIRef Id="..." /> tag to reference the custom dialog sequence.
Not to dismiss your requirement outright, but I would keep in mind that the attention span of a user running an installer is about that of a 2 year old. They likely won't read whatever you are putting there in the first place. Same goes for that EULA that management always wants to make sure the user scrolled all the way through before being allowed to click I Accept.
I follow a minimalist approach when creating installer UI. Next, Next (if needed), Install, Finish. Still don't quite like the Install Finish pattern but some do.
Related
I was trying to change the default MsiRMFilesInUse dialog box provided by restart manager used in wix toolset. Basically I want to localize the default message in the dialog box since it is not getting localized by windows.
I found this answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/46462452/14162315) which explains the steps of making the custom dialog box instead of normal one. A custom dialog box could help me in localizing the message.
I tried the above steps but I am getting the error - Duplicate symbol 'Property:WixUIRMOption' found. This typically means that an Id is duplicated. Check to make sure all your identifiers of a given type (File, Component, Feature) are unique.
I thought that I have to change the property id of WixUIRMOption also to some custom value to mitigate the error, so I changed it to Custom_WixUIRMOption. It compiled successfully after this change but the dialog box is not coming at all after this change.
link to source code of default MsiRMFilesInUse.wxs - https://github.com/AnalogJ/Wix3.6Toolset/blob/master/RC0-source/wix36-sources/src/ext/UIExtension/wixlib/MsiRMFilesInUse.wxs
you should be fine if you provide a localization for MsiRMFilesInUseText.
<String Id="MsiRMFilesInUseText" Overridable="yes">Translated text</String>
See how the dialog is implemented:
https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/blob/develop/src/ext/UIExtension/wixlib/MsiRMFilesInUse.wxs
See how wix ui is translated:
https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix3/blob/develop/src/ext/UIExtension/wixlib/WixUI_en-us.wxl
Currently I'm using the standard WixStandardBootstrapperApplication.HyperlinkLicense bootstrapper theme.
This theme doesn't show much information during installation. I was wondering if there is a theme that shows the log output of each installer it executes. Maybe after clicking an advanced button. I've seen this in a few installers but of course I do not know for sure if these were made with Wix.
I've tried inspecting the existing themes with ThmViewer.exe but unfortunately this program either crashes, or displays no preview window.
I've found a reference to something called the ExecuteProgressActionDataText here
<Text Name="ExecuteProgressActionDataText" X="11" Y="163" Width="-11" Height="17" FontId="3" DisablePrefix="yes" />
But unfortunately I cannot get my bootstrapper to launch if I use the supplied theme file. I think I need a complete theme file, but I'm not sure where to find the original one for the WixStandardBootstrapperApplication.HyperlinkLince theme.
Any thoughts on how to create a bootstrapper with a log window?
Update:
I've found the original xml of the HyperLink theme here. Using that I've added the ExecuteProgressActionDataText element to my UI. Its a single label that displays a lot of events. But unfortunately its not a listbox or something like that which makes it quite useless. (There are way too many messages per second to make sense of them in a single label).
The theme file seems to be driven by WixStandardBootstrapperApplication.cpp and unfortunately I do not see any other variables defined there that have a name that indicates that they do what I want :(.
You have to modify the bootstrapperapplication.cpp to implement the listview yourself. You can add the view in the wix theme I believe but you would have to alter OnExecuteMsiMessage so that instead of using ThemeSetTextControl(....) you have to add a new list item to the listview. You should be able to do anything you want in the bootstrapper application with regards to the UI just need to figure out how
I made an installer using wix burn.
I used the standard bootstrapper with Hyperlink license theme.
I don't want to display the EULA checkbox on upgrades. Once accepted one time, I don't want to show it again, or at least auto select it.
To achieve that, I customized the bafunctions.dll and wrote some code in OnDetect(). After a given condition is match, I set the variable EulaAcceptCheckbox = 1. I know that this is the variable name corresponding to the EULA checkbox because I inspected the log of the installer before making this changes.
After making all the modifications, I know my logic is working because I see the following lines in the log:
[1510:1410][2015-11-17T19:01:04]i000: Running detect complete BA function
[1510:1410][2015-11-17T19:01:04]i000: Setting numeric variable 'EulaAcceptCheckbox' to value 1
But the checkbox is not displayed as checked. I tried to set 'EulaAcceptCheckbox' in OnDetect() and also in OnDetectComplete(): no luck.
I also tried to set LicenseUrl="" and WixStdbaLicenseUrl="" but that does not work either.
I have already used bafunctions.dll to do some checkbox customization in another installer. It seems not to work with the EULA checkbox only. What's wrong with my approach?
There seems to be no solution for this.
I need to add a dialog box that would pop up during complete uninstall (not major upgrade) right after the confirmation ("Are you sure you want to uninstall this product?") dialog. This dialog would prompt the user to answer a question and based on the response, set up a property that would be used in the condition for the RemoveRegistryKey element (i.e. it will remove a registry key only if the user selects an option to delete the key).
I have an idea how to add a dialog to the install sequence (I am using a modified WixUI_InstalLDir sequence to which I added a custom dialog I need during installation), but I can't find any references that would explain how to add a custom dialog to an uninstall sequence. It would be even better if I could modify the uninstall confirmation dialog, so the user would see one dialog instead of two. An the key thing would be to be able to set up a property that could be used in the component condition.
Is this possible? Are there any examples how to do this?
This is against Microsoft design guidelines. Add/Remove programs calls the uninstall with a silent UI argument and the UI sequence is never processed.
The only place you can author UI during an uninstall is a "change" or "maintenance" UI experience where they select Repair | Change | Remove and on Remove do your UI. But you'd have to lock down the Remove buttom and force them through this path. Also realize they could call msiexec /x /qb from the command line.
Bottom line is Microsoft made this choice to make the uninstall process simple and easy for the user. As for removing the registry key, Microsoft would say that you should leave user data on uninstall.
I'm using WIX 3.0
After I install my product, I can run installer again and remove or repair my product.
How to specify different text on exit dialog for repair and remove?
I used "Installed" property, but it has the same value for repair and remove
Do you have any ideas?
Thanks in advance
You'll have to modify the ExitDialog.wxs for this (taking it from WiX sources and including to your project).
Take ProgressDlg.wxs as an example. It contains several pairs of controls, prefixed with 'Text' and 'Title', for instance 'TextInstalling' and 'TitleInstalling'. These pairs of controls are located at the same positions on a dialog, but are conditioned differently. For instance, 'TextRemoving' and 'TitleRemoving' are shown when WixUI_InstallMode='Remove'. Hence, setting WixUI_InstallMode to 'Remove' at the beginning of uninstall shows "Removing files", etc. on a progress dialog.
You can use this technique for other dialogs as well.
Thanks for update, Yan.
My problem was not how to change some text, but how to know what action was performed, remove or repair.
I don't know if this is good solution, but I used custom action and set the all text I need in the properties. The custom action runs with condition $MyInstalledComponent=2, which means that component is removed and is TRUE only on remove, but not on repair