09_InstallerWithUserInterface

In this example, we will reuse the 06_RememberPropertyPatternComplete example and add a user interface to the MSI.
In the user interface, the user will be able to set the value for the install location and the value of one property.

Predefined user interfaces

WiX comes with several predefined user interfaces described here and here.
The simplest one (WixUI_Minimal) just shows one dialog where the user needs to accept the shown license agreement.

Two steps are needed to include that dialog in the MSI:

• installer project must have a reference to WixUIExtension.dll
• in the installer wxs file, the following line must be added:

  <UIRef Id="WixUI_Minimal" />

Other types of predefined user interfaces come with dialogs that provide more customization options, such as:

• ability to choose install location
• ability to choose which features will be installed

Integrating custom dialog

As a base installer, we will use WixUI_InstallDir. This predefined user interface gives the ability to choose an install location. The ability to set custom property values will be added using a custom dialog.

Definition of the UI element of WixUI_InstallDir is available here. We wish to display our custom dialog after install location is selected and before the final dialog is displayed. From the WixUI_InstallDir definition, we can see that the dialog for choosing install location is called InstallDirDlg and the final dialog is called VerifyReadyDlg. This is how we should define the UI sequence to show our custom dialog (MyCustomPropertiesDlg) between the two mentioned dialogs:

    <UI Id="MyWixUI_InstallDir">
      <UIRef Id="WixUI_InstallDir" />

      <DialogRef Id="MyCustomPropertiesDlg" />

      <Publish Dialog="InstallDirDlg" Control="Next" Event="NewDialog" Value="MyCustomPropertiesDlg" Order="4">WIXUI_DONTVALIDATEPATH OR WIXUI_INSTALLDIR_VALID="1"</Publish>
      <Publish Dialog="VerifyReadyDlg" Control="Back" Event="NewDialog" Value="MyCustomPropertiesDlg" Order="1">1</Publish>
    </UI>

Creating custom dialog

MyCustomPropertiesDlg is created based on this sample which is available here.
And this is what the end dialog looks like:

Customizing Built-in WixUI Dialog Sets

This page describes how to customize the following aspects of built-in WixUI dialog sets:

• Specifying a product-specific license agreement file.
• Specifying product-specific setup UI bitmaps.
• Adding an optional checkbox and optional text to the ExitDlg.
• Customizing the text displayed in built-in dialogs.
• Changing the UI sequence of a built-in dialog set.
• Inserting a custom dialog into a built-in dialog set.

More details on specifying product-specific setup UI bitmaps can be found here.
Default bitmaps are available here.