Theme Coloring and MSI vs EXE

[alesser]

Hi AI team,

As a recent purchaser of the Pro version of your software, I am happy so far in finding most things to our liking (lack of git integration aside). However, my team has discovered that we would really like to use your Surface Theme but have a couple questions we're hoping you can address:

1. How can we customize the coloring of the theme? I've read through the forums and seen several examples of people attempting to do just this by setting custom values for parameters like "AI_CONTROL_VISUAL_STYLE" and "AI_CONTROL_VISUAL_STYLE_EX", but these "secret" parameter names are nowhere to be found in the documentation, at least as far as I can tell, and altering AI_CONTROL_VISUAL_STYLE alone doesnt seem to be sufficient. Is there some sort of authoritative list and visual guide on which parameter alters what in these themes, and which things need to be changed by way of graphics substitutions, and where to make the substitutions ? I think you would do your users a great service if this was properly documented in your help!
   
   We'd rather not be forced to upgrade to Enterprise just for this recoloring, especially if we are considering getting more licenses.
   
   Here are the links i've looked at already : http://www.advancedinstaller.com/forums ... hp?t=21646 , http://www.advancedinstaller.com/forums ... hp?t=22869, http://www.advancedinstaller.com/forums ... hp?t=30416
2. When using the theme, we seem to get a different visual effect when changing between an MSI/EXE boot-strapper hybrid ("EXE with resources next to it") and a pure MSI solution ("Single MSI"). Namely, when we use the pure MSI solution, we end up getting a normal "OS" window around the installer (at least on windows 7) instead of the clean look the surface theme has when using the EXE method. Is there a reason for this? Is it "fixable" or a limitation of Windows Installer without a boostrapper ?
   
   Related question: When the "EXE with resources next to it" method is used and someone tries to launch the MSI they get a notification that it must be used via the bootstrapper. Does this mean that the MSI in this case is not usable/suitable for SCCM-type central deployments? Would we need to build a separate MSI package for those customers that want a package like this ?

[Bogdan]

Hi,

Welcome to our forums and thank you for purchasing Advanced Installer.

1) Changing those properties should allow you to customize the colors. Unfortunately there is no additional documentation, as those themes are not designed to be customized extensively (that is why we provide multiple variations)
and also the Dialog Editor (which, as you noticed, is in the Enterprise edition).

Attach a sample project to this thread, to see why the colors don't change as you tried and we will try to update that sample and make it work, considering the limitations from the Pro edition.

2) As you hinted, this is a limitation from Windows Installer. For all the custom themes found in Themes page you need to use the EXE bootstrapper to get correct rendering.

3) If you want an MS, it is recommended you provide them with a separate MSI, for SCCM. You can duplicate your current build from Builds page, then change its output type to MSI.
You can also go to Install Parameters and enable the option "Limited to basic UI".

Also, for SCCM you can also give them the entire EXE (but with files inside), and provide them the proper EXE command line to install the package with no UI.
SCCM supports EXE installers too, but if you also have clients with Active Directory/GPO deployment or other tools that require an MSI, than I recommend going with the duplicate build, as I mentioned above.

Regards,
Bogdan

[alesser]

Hi Bogdan,

I think we'll deal with the coloring issues ourselves at this time. As it regards the use of different themes with multiple builds (EXE and MSI), there seems to be a couple of glitches in advanced Installer I'm hoping you can address:

1) When using the most bare-bones MSI-only build (new project, change nothing else), selecting the Surface theme converts the installer to an EXE and warns you that it will be optimal. However, if I think go to the builds menu and select "Single MSI", the program lets me do this and build the resulting installer (which, of course, doesn't work). Shouldn't the program intelligently realize i'm using a theme that requires the EXE installer to work properly and forbid me from switching back to the MSI method while the theme is in use? Otherwise, the product lets me construct a non-functional installer! (see attached file, MSI_SurfaceThemeBug.aip).

2) When configuring dual (or more builds) with different types (ex: an EXE + MSI, see attached AIP file "BuildsThemeBug"), you can set different themes for the two builds but ONLY within the same family. For example, I can set the EXE to "White Surface" and the MSI to "BlackSurface" [which doesnt work for the MSI anyways, see #1!), but I cannot set the EXE to "White Surface" and the MSI to "Classic - default" . This is a problem because it means I can't have a MSI and an EXE build in the same AIP file without forcing them to use the same interface theme. If I want to use the nice EXE themes, this means my MSIs won't work at all, because they don't support those. Shouldn't the application let me select completely different theme families for each build ? What am I missing here?

[Bogdan]

Hi,

1) We analyzed this situation in the past and decided not to force the user to have the EXE output because of the scenario mentioned in your second question.
We have users that build also an MSI from the same project, mostly used by IT admins to deploy it silently over the network with SCCM, Active Directory...

During such deployment the MSI dialogs are never visible, so the MSI installation should work.

As you already know, if the installer runs with full UI and you are using one of the custom themes, then the EXE output must be selected, otherwise the installation
UI will not render as expected.

2) I'm afraid this is a limitation from Advanced Installer, indeed you can only change the theme variation, but you cannot have completely different themes for
builds from the same project.

What I can recommend in this case is for the MSI build to enable the option "Limit to basic UI" from Install Parameters page, if you don't have any custom dialogs
where to capture user information required to continue the installation. Note, this is a per-build settings so when you go to Install Parameters page and enable it,
make sure it is only for the MSI build.

With this option on, the user will see just a single small dialog with a progress bar, when running the MSI install. Of course, the same MSI can also be deployed
silently by IT admins without any changes on your side.

Regards,
Bogdan

[alesser]

Hi,
I'm afraid this is a limitation from Advanced Installer, indeed you can only change the theme variation, but you cannot have completely different themes for builds from the same project.

Hrm, that's unfortunate. Do you guys plan to work on this ? In theory, I could accomplish the same thing by cloning the AIP file and then just changing the theme, but that seems cumbersome. It would be ideal if the themes were fully customizable for each build type, such that the builds are truly independently customizable, which is the whole point of having not to use another project for multiple builds!

I would like to note that "Within the same theme family" doesn't really line up with the implied per-build theme customization advertised on this page http://www.advancedinstaller.com/multip ... llers.html where you say for each installer you can customize (list of things, including Themes).

[Bogdan]

Hi,

Hrm, that's unfortunate. Do you guys plan to work on this ?

Unfortunately this is not on our roadmap for the near future, due to an architectural limitation from Advanced Installer.

In theory, I could accomplish the same thing by cloning the AIP file and then

Closing an AIP file will lead to bigger problems, because you duplicate unique GUIDs that identify your package/application with the OS.

For cases when re-using an AIP file is required, we built the support to save the project file as a custom template.

We apologize for the incomplete information from the website article you mentioned, and thank you for bringing it to our attention, I personally updated it to mention that only Theme Variations can be set per build.

Regards,
Bogdan