I'm trying to understand InstallShield (2009)/InstallScript on the fly, because I'm modifying someone else's installation script.
One of the dialogs during the installation procedure previously had one textbox on it, asking for a SQL Server instance, assuming a certain database name. Now I've just completed an enhancement enabling you to choose any database name, not just the default, and I need to add a field to this dialog so the user can input the chosen DB name. Monkey see, monkey do, just make a new control and duplicate and adapt whatever functionality the form had for the first textbox - easy enough, right?
Umm... problem here. It seems that the "SdShowDlgEdit1" form is a generic thing that gets shipped with InstallShield, and is used all over, wherever you have a dialog that needs one textbox. Change that form, and it changes everywhere that it's called... so now I have a spurious 2nd textbox appearing all over my installation wherever there was a single text box before.
Oops. Undo changes, and change the reference to "SdShowDlgEdit2", which is - you guessed it - InstallShield's standard form for dialogs needing 2 textboxes. Now that would be great.... excepting that the previous developer got there before me and added a "browse" button to that form for a place where he needed the 2nd text box to contain a folder path. I don't want that "browse" button, and I can't delete it.
So I think, why don't I create a custom form of my own, and not get under anyone else's toes? So I clone the form, rename the new instance to "EnterDbDetails", delete the "Browse" button and make the form look just right.
Then I go back into the InstallScript to redirect to "EnterDbDetails" and discover that the EzDefineDialog function requires me to pass in the "Resource ID" of the form. Now what was it again... 12018... great... fill in all necessary details, compile, build, and give it a whirl. Looks lovely, all the right default values are filled into the two text boxes - but hey! Why is the browse button there? And why is the text on the labels not what I set?
Back to InstallScript, check the Resource ID - turns out that the original "SdShowDlgEdit2" also has a Resource ID of 12018. Well, that explains that nicely. Silly that InstallShield allows you to have two forms with the same ID, but whatever... So let's go back to my "EnterDbDetails" form and change the ID...
... but the Resource Identifier property is read-only! WTF?
So now I can't use any of the standard forms, and I can't use a custom form because it won't let me change the resource ID.
I am stumped. Can anyone please explain how you are supposed to do something like this, which really ought to be the simplest thing in the world?
Creating New Custom Dialogs in InstallScript and InstallScript MSI Projects
Quote from the site (2015 edition) :
To create a custom dialog, you need to perform the following general steps:
Use the New Dialog Wizard to add a new custom dialog to your project. For more information, see Using the New Dialog Wizard to Add a New Custom Dialog to an InstallScript or InstallScript MSI Project.
Add controls to the dialog. For more information, see Adding a Control to a Dialog in an InstallScript or InstallScript MSI Project.
Create a script function that loads the dialog into memory, displays it on the screen, handles the end user’s interaction with the dialog’s controls, and closes the dialog when the user is finished with it. For more information, see Using InstallScript to Implement Custom Dialogs.
To create a new dialog:
Open the Dialogs view. The Dialogs view is located in the User Interface section of the View List.
Right-click the All Dialogs explorer and then click New Dialog. The Dialog Wizard opens. Click Next to dismiss the Welcome panel.
In the Dialog Template panel, click Interior Wizard Panel, and select the Let me insert this dialog in a User Interface sequence check box.
In the User Interface panel, select Installation in the User Interface Sequence list. In the list of dialogs, select InstallWelcome. Based on these selections, InstallShield will insert your new dialog in sequence immediately following the InstallWelcome dialog.
In the Dialog Position and Condition panel, leave the default settings, and click Finish. Your new dialog appears in the Dialogs list.
Right-click the dialog and select Rename. Rename the dialog WelcomeBitmap.
Using the same technique, you can insert additional dialogs in your installation’s user interface.
In this step, you will modify the WelcomeBitmap dialog that you just created:
First, create a bitmap (using a program like Microsoft Paint) that measures 300 by 150.
Open the Dialogs view.
Expand the WelcomeBitmap dialog’s node. Click English (United States) to open the Dialog Editor.
Click the Dialog Bold Title text box at the top of the dialog. In the Text field, type Welcome Bitmap. This changes the dialog’s main title.
Click the Dialog Normal Description text box at the top of the dialog. In the Text field, type Displays my welcome bitmap. This changes the dialog’s description.
Click the Bitmap button on the Dialog Control toolbar and use the cursor to drag a box on the dialog. Set the Height to 150 and the Width to 300.
In the File field browse to the bitmap file that you created in step 1.
After rebuilding the project (by pressing F7) and running it (by pressing CTRL+F5), the Welcome Bitmap dialog will appear after the Install Welcome dialog.
You need to edit the ResourceID (to something unique) in the Dialog table which is found in the Direct Editor under Additional Tools section in the Installation Designer.
By custimizing standard InstallShield dialogs, like sdWelcome, sdFinish and sdFinishReboot you will be able to use the dialogs default script APIs with the performed customization's
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I have a MFC dialog based application. User can change the language of the dialog, and I made this by closing existing dialog, and opening another with changed language. The problem is that the effect in the taskbar is that one icon is removed, and another identical is created in its place. If my application's icon is not the last icon in the task bar it will be perceived as it was moved to the end of taskbar icon set.
I want to retain icon's position in the taskbar, and rather to prevent icon flicker at all from happening. How do I do that?
The application must support OS'es from Windows XP to Windows 7.
EDIT: alternative question for which I would accept an answer is how to create an invisible window that is nevertheless shown in the taskbar, and how to forward relevant window messages from that window to my main window?
Make the dialog a child of another outer parent window. The parent can be a dialog or any other kind of window; all it will be providing is the title bar. If the user tries to resize it it will have to forward resizing commands to the dialog, but otherwise you shouldn't need to do much in the parent window.
Why not replace the dialog with a CFormView instead? That way there's a frame window that wraps around the dialog (which is embedded in a form view) and it's the frame window that owns the taskbar icon.
Create an SDI application that displays a CFormView. Display the dialog in the default language (or whatever langauge the user previously chose) on initialization. When the user chooses the 'change language' option, simply change the form view that's being displayed with a new one.
Bonus feature: with this design, the framework will take care of things like language-specific accelerators and menus for you with no effort on your part.
For more on how to do this, check out http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/w-d/doc_view/viewmanagement/article.php/c3341/Multiple-Views-Using-SDI.htm
i want indentify all mouse click event like WM_LBUTTONDOWN and WM_LBUTTONUP, on picture control in vc++,
but i am not able to do this
please tell me how can i identifies all events separately.
thanks in advance.
You should enable property "Notify" of PictureControl to get the event.
You can add an event handler to the picture control using Visual Studio IDE and modify the code for handler function. That should be easy.
I'm guessing you're using MFC. In that case you have to add an activex control to your dialog.
i. Adding the control: To add such a control to your dialog box right click your dialog box and click the option called "Insert ActiveX Control". A modal dialog box appears. You have to select "Microsoft Forms 2.0 Image". Click OK. Control is added.
ii. Select an image: Right click your newly added control and select "Properties". Select your desired image clicking the picture attribute. Also there are other properties to customize the picture i.e, stretching, clipping image etc. You'll see your image is loaded into the control.
iii. Adding the handler function: Right click the control and select "Add Event handler". From the new modal dialog box select "MouseDown" or "MouseUp" as message type and click "add and edit". Add your code to achieve desired behavior.
N.B: MFC is not available with Visual C Express. You need a professional version of VS to compile MFC code.
**Hello..
i am creating English To Gujarati Dictionary WinForm Application.
I need to set a system wide hook to the right click context menu on for text selection.
it means when this application is running,and if user selects word from any program and right click on it gujarati meaning of that word should be displayed as menu item.
How to do this?
or any other options like Registery Programming,shell extentions etc...?
i have to do this,even if you say its not possible.
so please help me.**
Hooking the mouse activity is the easy part. See SetWindowsHookEx, and lots of questions regarding hooking in SO. This way, you can tell when the mouse is right-clicked.
Getting the selected text is the harder part. See WindowFromPoint, for starters. You'd have to recognize the control, and if appropriate get the selected text from it. This will not always be possible using simple Win32 functions, if the control is complex.
Adding the translation to the right-click menu is probably the impossible part. Adding stuff to explorer context menu is not a problem, because explorer provides that possibility. But various applications will have various right-click menus, without a way to extend them. They might not even use Win32 for the menus, for whatever reason. A better option, IMO, would be one of the following:
Forget about changing the right-click menu. Open a window next to the point of selection with whatever content you want, and let the application show its own right-click menu.
If the user right-clicks while, say, pressing shift, show your own right-click menu, and don't pass the message to the application. So the user will see only one menu, which is yours. The user must of course be aware of this combination.
Using LWUIT framework to develop mobile application.
In LWUIT by default first command is placed in the left and subsequent commands will be placed in the right menu of the form including the command which is already placed in form left.I need to add two menus to form.Left menu contains general application specific commands such as "Minimize","Back" and "Exit". Right Menu contains screen specific commands such as "Play Audio","Play Video" etc... Initially left softbutton of the form contains the text "Options" and the right softbutton of the form contains the text "Menu". When user selects "Options", a menu will be displayed with the following commands:
Minimize
Back
Exit
When user selects right soft button "Menu", a menu will be displayed with screen specific commands:
Play Audio
Play Video etc...
Commands of the right menu keeps changing from one form to another form, whereas the commands of left menu remains the same for all screens(forms). I know command menu can be customized by overriding "Form.createCommandList(Vector)" which returns a list. But here in my case I need two lists(menus). One at the left of the form and the other one at the right of the form.Please do help me in resolving this issue.
A LWUIT menu is just a dialog containing a List (or buttons for touch menu or pretty much anything you want), so to implement this just create a Command called options and place it in the left soft button. When options is pressed just show the dialog with your "additional commands". Since a List can accept a command array or vector doing something like this can be really easy.
You can look at the code for MenuBar which is pretty simple, you can also replace the menu bar component in the latest version LWUIT (SVN at the moment) but that seems redundant for this particular use case.
Is it possible to put a menu in a dialog based application? How?
Yes, it is possible to add menu to the dialog based applications. You can create the menu as a resource and attach the same to the dialog.
If you open the properties for dialog, you can see a Menu as a property for which you can assign an existing Menu ID.
Steps:
Right click on Resource View and
insert a new Menu. (Menu with some ID-- lets say IDR_MENU1 -- is created)
Configure the menu to add required
items in menu and provide the ID,
Caption to the menu items.
Right click on Dialog and open
Properties...
From Menu Combobox, select the ID of
the required menu ( here IDR_MENU1)
You can add a menu resource to a dialog application, but you haven't said which version of Visual Studio you're using so details are hard to provide. You should know that because CDialog isn't derived from CFrameWnd, update routing won't work - you need to read this article for the details.
That article includes instruction for adding the menu if you're using a version of Visual Studio post-VC6, which you probably are - read the "more information" section further down the article for that.
See DLGCBR32 MFC sample in the MSDN.