Basic MSI theme NOT working!!!

[jscozz]

I have a Basic MSI project... chose the Globe theme.

The "Preparing to install..." dialog is themed properly, but form then on, the theme is not used... the 'Welcome" dialog... "license agreement", "Read me", "Customer info", etc. all do NOT use the theme... but instead they use the old standard Installshield graphics.

Anyone have any idea why???

Jeff

[MGarrett]

Does your install include an _isuser.dll file for custom dialogs? Just an idea.

-MG

[jscozz]

Thanks for the reply, but I have to say I have no idea!

I paid $900 for an upgrade... did what the instructions said to do... it does not work... and I have no way to get free phone support... my choices are to post here and hope that the community can help or pay for a support call to find out why the $900 I just spent was not enough to get working software!

I guess if this were the first time over the years that something like this has happened it would be different... but it happens with some number of features EVERY release!

[MGarrett]

A couple more ideas:
If you are using custom dialogs from your own DLL, they of course won't be themed.
Also, if you create any new dialogs or modify the existing Installshield dialogs, then they must be the exact same size as the original dialogs, or Installshield will not be able to apply the theme.
According to the Installshield Help file, for the "Global" Theme, the dialogs must be 374 wide by 266 high.

[Christopher_Pai]

jscozz wrote:
my choices are to post here and hope that the community can help

Posting politely and professionaly is likely to increase your chances of achieving your stated goal.

The dialog you mention as working isn't really a dialog from your MSI, it's being generated by your setup.exe bootstrapper. Somehow you have gotten your project into a state where MSI has told the EXE to compile with this themes but your real dialogs ( in the MSI ) don't have this setting. Have you tried switching back and forth between a different theme to force it to try setting everything again?

[MichaelU]

The themes are created for a specific dialog size, and will not apply to dialogs that are not of that size. If your common dialog size is not the expected one, this might explain the behavior you are seeing. To verify this you could create a sample project and compare the Width and Height attributes on the dialogs that are not receiving the theme.

[jscozz]

I will double check the dialog sizes... this project has nothing other than the default built in dialogs... although it HAS been upconverted from every version of IS since 5.0 Express... to 9, X Pro, 11 Pro, 11.5 Pro, 2008 Pro. I am wondering if one of those earlier versions may have used a different dialog size and it just upconverted through the years... I will double check to see if they are 374 x 266.

[Christopher_Pai]

The conversion history is no doubt the source of the problem. It's very difficult ( and risky ) for InstallShield to try to apply radically new concepts to existing UI tables considering the amount of customization a user could have done and the unknown interactions the new coversion could do.

You might wish to consider creating a new MSI, applying the skin and then export all of the dialogs. Then take ( a copy of ) your existing install and drop all of the dialog/UI information and reimport the new exported dialogs. Finally reapply your UI customizations.

[#9]

Chris is definitely on the right track.

When you migrate a project, there are some occasions where you do not get new features resolutions just due to the previous project's design.

You might want to try this in a sample project. I just did and they worked for me.

[jscozz]

Thanks for the input from everyone.

First I verified that the dialogs were indeed one pixel taller in my project than the size requried for the globe theme... so I set them properly and rebuilt... still no globe theme... so I will now do as recommended and drop my dialogs and reimport dialogs created in a clean MSI... please excuse my lack of proficiency in Installshield... but I assume that a simple right click in teh clean msi and "Export all dialogs to dialog files" and then an Import of each one in my existing project is all I need to do? I have not made ANY custom dialog modifications except speficying file names where necessary (EULA, readme, etc.)... if I import a dialog with the same name will it overwrite the exitsing one, eliminating the need for me to delete it first?

[DebbieL]

After changing the dialog size, you may need to change the dialog theme to a different theme, and then back to the Global theme. Then build your project. (I suspect that InstallShield needs a chance to reapply the themes to all of the now-correctly sized dialogs, and that's why you're not seeing the theme updates.)

I hope that helps.

Debbie Landers
Macrovision Corporation

[jscozz]

Just de-selecting the theme and reselecting it after fixing the sizes did the trick!

Thanks for everyone's input and help!