Hey, I have been out of the loop for a few years, but have been asked to help out with an IS 2009 project by my company. I will try to include all I know about the requirements they want to have in the install.
In essence, they want the install to include dynamic offers (like the Yahoo toolbar in the Value-Added feature). The offers would not be built into the install, but rather pulled in from a server. It's obvious there isn't a browser control for dialogs in IS. Is it possible to build dialogs in an external environment (like .NET) and use them in an install? I don't care about the difficulty or hoops, I just need to know if it is possible.
Both InstallScript and MSI projects can call into .NET assemblies (in different ways; see DotNetCoCreateObject() and "Calling a Public Method in a Managed Assembly" aka Managed Code Custom Action respectively), but integrating an external dialog into your dialog sequence could be painful. If you're not dead set on offering a browser UI to your end user, it may be better to wire up script or custom actions behind a custom MSI or InstallScript dialog like the ones you're already using.
