Beyond the Native Windows Installer User Interface

A frequent question on the support lines for Windows Installer is ‘how do I do UI widget X or UI behavior y?’ While native Windows Installer UI has many widgets and behaviors occationally we have to say ‘Sorry, you can’t do that with native Windows Installer UI.’ The good news is that Windows Installer has a scale up solution called the External UI Handler for developers who need widgets and behaviors beyond the native support.

Some of the things an external UI would do are captured in Role-based Guide to Windows Installer Documentation [Windows Installer] under the sub bullets

• Create an external user interface to present a custom user interface to configure the installation and obtain information from the user about the pending installation process.

  For more information, see the following:

  • MsiSetExternalUIRecord
  • MsiSetExternalUI
  • Monitoring an Installation Using MsiSetExternalUI
  • Parsing Windows Installer Messages
  • Returning Values from an External User Interface Handler
  • INSTALLUI_HANDLER
  • Handling Progress Messages Using MsiSetExternalUI

To set up the External UI handler, you’ll need a bootstrapper. Some of the things a bootstrapper would to do are captured in Role-based Guide to Windows Installer Documentation [Windows Installer] under the sub bullets

• Bootstrap the Windows Installer onto a user's computer.
  • Bootstrapping
  • Instmsi.exe
  • Internet Download Bootstrapping
  • Msistuff.exe
  • A URL-Based Windows Installer Installation Example
  • Configuring the Setup.exe Resources
  • Downloading an Installation from the Internet
• For more information, see the following:

[Author: Robert Flaming]

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