Displaying Dialogs During Basic MSI Installations

InstallShield 2013

You can display an end-user dialog in one of two ways, as described below:

Insert the dialog into a User Interface sequence.
Launch the dialog through another dialog’s behavior.

Inserting Dialogs into Sequences

Project: When you create a dialog in a merge module, you cannot insert it into a sequence until you associate that module with an installation project.

To schedule a dialog in a sequence:

1. In the View List under Behavior and Logic, click Custom Actions and Sequences.
2. In the Sequences explorer, expand one of the two high-level sequences in which dialogs are usually displayed—Installation, Advertisement, or Administration—to view its User Interface sequence.
3. Expand the User Interface sequence to see how the existing actions, dialogs, and custom actions are ordered.
4. Right-click the existing action or dialog that you want your dialog to follow in the sequence, and then click Insert. The Insert Action dialog box opens.
5. In the list, select Dialogs.
6. Select your new dialog from the list of dialogs.
7. Click OK.

When your installation runs with a full user interface (determined by the /q command-line parameter) and all conditions are met for this dialog, it will be displayed within the selected sequences.

While InstallShield lets you insert a dialog into an Execute sequence, doing so violates ICE13.

Launching a Dialog Through Another Dialog’s Behavior

Most dialogs are displayed as a result of the NewDialog (displays another dialog in the wizard) or SpawnDialog (shows a modal dialog) control event. By selecting this event in a dialog’s behavior, usually for a Next button, you can specify the dialog that succeeds it. By adding a condition to the control event, you could present different dialogs depending on the result of a selection in the preceding dialog.

For example, to display a WelcomeBitmap dialog after the InstallWelcome dialog:

1. In the View List under User Interface, click Dialogs.
2. In the Dialogs explorer, click the InstallWelcome dialog.
3. Click the Edit dialog behavior link in the pane to the right.
4. In the Behavior Editor, select the Next button in the control list.
5. Click the Events tab to view and edit the Next button’s control events.
6. Click the Event field, and then in the list click NewDialog.
7. Type WelcomeBitmap as the argument.
8. Type 1 for the condition to indicate that the dialog should be created under any circumstance.

Note: If the InstallWelcome dialog had launched a different dialog from the Next button, you would repeat the above procedure for the WelcomeBitmap’s Next button to show the next dialog.

To learn about viewing your new dialog in the Custom Actions and Sequences view, see Viewing End-User Dialog Order in the Custom Actions and Sequences view (Basic MSI Projects).