The Advanced Installer main window is organized into five sections: Main Menu, toolbar, page menu, page display and log pane. Each page may in turn be organized in multiple tabs and/or dialog boxes. Most dialog boxes can be resized by dragging their bottom-right corner.
Toolbar
There is always a main
toolbar available, allowing quick access to most commands provided by
the menu system. For example: New, Open and Save Project, Build and
Run. Some of the creation process' pages insert their own toolbars to
easily add files to the install, create shortcuts, etc. For a detailed
explanation of each item on the main toolbar see Working with Projects.
Page Menu
The page menu contains
grouped lists of conceptually related pages. These groups are: Product Information, Requirements, Resources, Deployment, User Interface, System Changes, Server, Custom Behavior. From
general to detailed, clicking on these items will display, to the
right, the various configuration options for your installer. The bold
item is the currently selected one. You can hide the page menu by
clicking on the top-right corner close button. To show it again, go to
the “View > Left Pane > Show” menu.
You can customize the Left Pane to display the desired groups or elements from a group. This can be done by selecting the "Add/Remove" option located in the bottom-right side of the Left Pane. The pane's view will change allowing you to select which elements you want to keep and which not by enabling/disabling the combobox associated with each element. Once your customization is done you can choose to keep it by using the "Apply" option located on the bottom left side of the Left Pane or to discard it by selecting the "Cancel" option. The size of the icons and elements can also be changed. In order to do this select the “Log Pane > Compact” option from the "View" toolbar menu.
You can use the "Quick filter" above the Left Menu to quickly reach pages of interest to you. The filter not only supports searching in the actual left menu entries, but also looks in a predefined set of keywords relevant to each page when trying to match your query. You can for example type "variable" in the filter, and the "Environment" page will show up, where you can configure environment variables.
Page Display
The center stage for creating your installer is this large area on the right. It is the main work area - all project data is displayed here.
Information Panes
This panel will display one of the selected panes from the "Option" menu of Advanced Installer's menu bar and it is hidden by default. You can hide it again by clicking on the top-right corner button. To show it back, use the View -> Informations Panes menu item and select the desired pane.
Topics
- Main Menu
A description of Advanced Installer's main menu and of actions attached to each item. - References Pane
Finding where a file, folder or property is used. - Notes Pane
Displays various notes added that are specific for the selected view - Issues Pane
Displays issues and offers to fix some of them.