The C# Column

Deploying .NET applications - II

(Continued from last week…)

Suppose we wish to add a key-value pair to Hkey_Current_User | Software | [Manufacturer]. For this we must right-click on it and select New | Key. We can rename the key as per our wish. To add a value we need to right-click on the newly formed key and select the type of value we wish to add, i.e. whether it should be a String value, a DWORD value, a Binary value, etc. We can set it to some value using the Properties window. Now if we build winsetup and install the application, the entry would be made in the registry. We can verify this by executing the Registry Editor (RegEdit) through the ‘Start | Run’ dialog box.

Adding custom installation dialog boxes

Once the MSI file is built and we double-click on it, the installation starts. The user is presented with five dialog boxes during installation. These dialog boxes are predefined dialog boxes that get added to our project by default. We can customise these dialogs or add new dialog boxes to our project using the User Interface Editor. This editor can be opened by right-clicking on the project in Solution Explorer and selecting ‘View | User Interface’.

The User Interface Editor shows a tree control containing two sections—Install and Administrative Install. The Install section contains dialog boxes that will be displayed when any end-user runs the installer. Administrative installation is a feature of Microsoft Windows Installer that allows us to install a source image of an application on a network share. Users in a workgroup who have access to the network share can then install the application from the source image. The User Interface Editor allows us to specify a different set of installation dialog boxes that will be displayed when an administrator installs the application to a network share via the command line as shown below:

Msiexec.exe /a Setup1.msi

This will start the installer of our application and dialog boxes specified for the Administrative Install will be displayed.

The default set of predefined dialog boxes is displayed in the User Interface Editor; we can rearrange or delete these if we wish. The default set of dialog boxes varies according to the type of deployment project. Predefined dialog boxes are divided into three categories:

• Start Dialog Boxes

Start dialog boxes are displayed before the installation begins. Commonly they are used to gather customer information or to allow the user to change the installation directory.

• Progress Dialog Boxes

A progress dialog box is displayed to provide feedback on the progress of an installation.

• End Dialog Boxes

End dialog boxes are displayed once the installation has finished successfully. Common uses are notifying the user that the installation is complete or to allow the user to launch the application.

We can remove dialog boxes from the default set as per our wish or reposition them using the right-click | Move Up/Move Down options. Note that all combinations are not possible here. For example, we cannot remove the Progress dialog box and place it in the Start dialog boxes category after the Welcome dialog box.

Now in addition to these dialog boxes we can add and configure our own custom dialog boxes that get displayed during the installation. To do so we need to right-click on the desired category and select ‘Add Dialog’. On doing so the Add Dialog Box gets displayed.

Here we are presented with several ready-made dialog boxes that we may want to display during installation. The following table indicates the use of these dialog boxes.

Out of the several dialog boxes listed in this table we will discuss only the ones that are likely to be used more commonly. These include the Checkbox, Read Me, and the Splash dialog boxes.

• The Checkbox dialog box

Suppose during installation we plan to ask the user whether he wants to add the ‘Disclaimer.txt’ file along with ‘windowsapp1.exe’ or not. To control this we plan to add the Checkbox dialog box. If the user checks the Checkbox, the text file gets installed. To add this custom dialog box we have followed the same steps discussed above and added the Checkboxes (A) Dialog. This dialog box gets added as the last dialog box of the Start dialog boxes category. So we can move it up by two positions. Next we have changed some properties of the Checkboxes (A) dialog box. These are shown in the following table.

Note that we have changed the visible property of the remaining checkboxes to false because we need just one checkbox. Now we need to add a folder in the Application Folder named Disclaimer. For this we must right-click on the Application Folder and select ‘Add | Folder’. This adds a new folder, that we rename to Disclaimer.

Next we add a text file called ‘Disclaimer.txt’ to this folder. Hence the Application Folder would contain the ‘windowsapp1.exe’ along with the Disclaimer folder holding the ‘Disclaimer.txt’ file. Then comes the most important step of setting the Condition property of the ‘Disclaimer.txt’ file so that it only gets installed when the checkbox is checked. To do this we need to open the Properties Window of the ‘Disclaimer.txt’ and set its Condition property to CHECKBOXA1=1. On building the winsetup.msi project, and double-clicking it, we are presented with this dialog box in the second step of the installation process. The Disclaimer dialog box is shown in the following figure.

• The Read Me dialog box

This dialog box displays the Read Me file during the installation procedure and installs it along with the application. To demonstrate this we must add the Read Me dialog box in the Start dialog boxes category. Next we need to associate a Rich Text File (rtf) with this dialog box. For this we have to create a ‘ReadMe.rtf’ file and add it to the Applications Folder. Next we have to set the ReadmeFile attribute of the Read Me dialog box to this file. We can browse for this file and since we had added it to the Applications Folder we will find it there.

Note that we cannot browse beyond the three folders (Application Folder, User’s Program and User’s Programs Menu), hence if we wish to make any file available in the project we have to first get it copied in one of these. Now after re-building the project and installing it we are presented with this Read Me dialog box as the 5th step of installation and this file gets copied along with the folder.

• The Splash dialog box

We add the Splash dialog box just after the Welcome dialog box. The User Interface Editor, after addition of all the dialog boxes, is shown in the following figure.

To display a splash screen in the Splash dialog box, all we need to do is to set the SplashBitmap property of the dialog to a ‘.bmp’ file. To make the file available we must first add it to the Application Folder. On re-building this project and running the installer we are presented with the Splash dialog box.

In the next part we will see how to add launch conditions to the setup project.

Yashavant Kanetkar, one of the first Express Computer columnists, is an established software expert, speaker and author with several best-sellers to his credit, including titles like “Let Us C” and the “Fundas” series. Contact him at kanetkar@dcubesoft.com