What Are the Differences Between Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI Project?

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Summary

Differences between Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI project types

Question

What are the differences between Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI project types?

Answer

Both project types create installation that meet the latest Windows Logo requirements. Both the Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects create installations that have the same professional, industry-standard look and feel that your end users have come to expect from InstallShield.

Basic MSI Projects

Basic MSI projects are recommended when you want to...

• Maximize compatibility with administrative tools, such as SMS.
• Maximize the ability of users or other third parties to customize the setup for redeployment.
• Minimize the size of the installation.
• Avoid writing scripting code and want to instead set properties and make table entries.

Basic MSI projects allow you to author your installation using only the native MSI feature set. The geometry of your installation dialogs, as well as the flow of your installation's user interface (UI) is authored directly in the MSI package, and the Windows Installer Service uses its native UI rendering capabilities to display the UI to your end users.

The advantages of this project type are fully realized if you need to author your installation in an open format. Basic MSI projects have the ability to run InstallScript code in the form of custom actions, though the type of InstallScript code that can be run is limited. These projects also still take advantage of other robust features provided by InstallShield, such as dialog authoring, the ability to call custom actions in standard windows DLLs, and the ability to specify installation files.

InstallScript MSI Projects

InstallScript projects are recommended when you:

• Have advanced requirements for the user experience (the end-user dialogs).
• Want to use full-screen billboards during the user experience.
• Want a dialog to behave in a particular way (for example, enable controls on a dialog after an end user types a specific number of characters in an edit field, or dynamically populate multi-line edit fields, list boxes, and combo boxes).
• Prefer authoring the user experience using a procedural language rather than a set of tables.
• Want to perform actions before and/or after the MSI package has been run.
• Are upgrading your project from InstallShield Professional and want to preserve as much of your existing InstallScript code as possible.

This project type combines the power and flexibility of the InstallScript language as an external UI to control and display the user interface of the installation, while it leaves the modifications of the target system to the Windows Installer service. The InstallScript MSI project also provides you with a view to directly modify, add, or delete installation types for your project and allows you to display billboards while your installation is copying files to the target system.

Using InstallScript as the installation driver has many benefits. The first is that InstallScript's event model allows you to create a script-driven installation without writing a single line of code. If you want to add custom functionality, you need to implement only the events whose functionality you want to change. If you need more power, you have the option of using the Custom Action wizard to insert InstallScript custom actions into any point in the Execute sequence. This allows you to run a piece of InstallScript code at any point during the installation even while the Windows Installer Engine is running.

Additional Information

For more information on installation projects, see InstallShield Help Library topic Determining Which Installation Project Is Right For You.