I'm working with InstallShield 2013 Professional, Basic MSI Project.
My installation package contains exe file - myfile.exe. I added shortcut for it in Shortcuts view specifying myfile.exe as Icon File, and 0 as Icon Index. The destination place for this shortcut is a Desktop on a target box.
Suppose, my executable contains 3 icon resources and I want to change icon dynamically during Installation. To be more clear what I want to do: I have 3 radio buttons on one of Installation Dialogs and I want to apply icon to myfile.exe shortcut depending on radio button that was checked (1-st radio button->1-st icon, 2-nd radio button->2-nd icon, 3-rd radio button->3-rd icon).
How can I get this behavior? In other words, how can I change icon index of Icon File during installation?
This is kind of a complicated request. An easier way of achieving this would be to compile the EXE three times with different names and different icon 0 resources and then use mutually exclusive component conditions to control which one gets installed.
It gets trickier if that's not an option. The Shortcut Table defines the IconIndex column as an integer and is not formattable. This means you can't say [ICONINDEX] in the field and let it resolve at install time.
So what can you do? You can use a custom action to dynamically emit table data into temp tables during the install. An example using C# can be found here at: Dynamic Windows Installer UI
Realize that if someone creates a shortcut by hand they are likely to pick the "wrong" icon.
Related
I'm trying to build an extension to Visual Studio with a couple of custom commands. It is well documented how to add commands to VS Menu/Toolbars. There are also many samples how to add custom button to the Project Explorer Toolbar. The problem is that best (most suitable) toolbar for my command is those on the top of Output Window.
So, there are two questions:
Is it possible?
If yes then how to achieve this?
1) It is really possible. It looks like any toolbar and any menu could be extended by any command.
2) The method of extending is the same for all toolbars (and menu). What you need to know is toolbar's ID. ID could be found in file vsshlids.h placed in your installed VSSDK inc folder. For output window toolbar this ID is IDM_VS_TOOL_OUTPUTWINDOW.
I have a toolbar with some actions linked to macros in Personal.xls. I want to use the toolbar in Excel 2010 under Win7, but it insists C:\Documents and Settings\user\App...\PERSONAL.XLS doesn't exist. Quite right, they've changed the %AppData% location to C:\Users\user... And I can't put a copy of PERSONAL.XLS in the old place because C:\Documents and Settings\ is special-cased in Windows 7, and it's a forbidden place to everyone.
My question: How can I reset the macro linked to the toolbar buttons?
You used to be able to access
the Commandbars collection to get a command bar
The Controls collection of the command bar to get a control (button in this case)
The OnAction property of the control to identify the linked macro.
But OnAction doesn't seem to be a supported property for Excel 2010.
Any suggestions?
I'd much rather relink the toolbar than create a new custom ribbon tab. The toolbar buttons don't waste the APALLING amount of space custom ribbon items take up, and the custom icons on my toolbarare meaningful. Subsiduary question: Are there simple ways to create custom designs for custom ribbon items?
Looks like I didn't investigate closely enough. "OnAction" might not appear in the Object Browser, but it is available, and can be used to reset the associated toolbars. It didn't seem to work using the Immediate window, but does work within code in a module.
Cheers folks...
In Windows Seven, I'm aware of the "Default Programs" dialog in Control Panel, which lets me associate pre-defined extensions with programs. However, I need to add an association for a file extension that isn't in the list. In WinXP, I'm pretty sure I could add entries to the list, but that doesn't appear to be immediately available in Windows Seven.
If you select a file with the desired extension in Explorer and click on it, a dialog box pops up that lets you select a program from a list. Click that. Then you can CLick on "Browse..." and select the program you want the file to be opened with. I have not tried, but you might be able to change it through the Default Programs afterwards.
In Visual Studio 2008, 'Start Debugging' switches Visual Studio to a different layout. How can I force Visual Studio to use a single layout at all times?
I could attempt to lay out my windows in both normal and 'Debug' modes as similarly as possible. However, i) Visual Studio will still do a visible redraw, and ii) I have to keep the layouts in sync manually.
Update: It seems the correct terms are 'Design View' and 'Debugging View'. According to Window Layouts: The Four Modes 'There is no way to tell Visual Studio to use one state for all modes at this time.' Is this really true?
As others have pointed out, you can't use one settings group to control both design and debug views. Visual Studio doesn't make it easy to get the most out of window placement settings, but the approach I use to manage layouts might help.
Instead of frequently adjusting window placements by hand, try to think of a fixed number of different views you want to work with. Eclipse has perspectives, window layouts you can switch between. Think of Visual Studio this way. For example, I use two layouts in Visual Studio: one to take advantage of two monitors when I'm sitting at my physical workstation, another for one monitor when I'm working remotely. If you can constrain yourself to using a group of layouts that makes sense for you without manually adjusting windows, you can make design and debug window placements the same for each layout.
However, switching between layouts is painful with Visual Studio out of the box. You have to go to Tools->Import and Export Settings and select the layout manually. It takes more than five mouse clicks and sometimes 15 seconds to switch layouts this way on my workstation. We can do much better!
Save the window positions you want for each layout to settings files
Make a macro to load each settings file
Bind the macros to keyboard shortcuts or toolbar buttons
Save window positions to a settings file
Arrange windows the way you want them for a specific layout. Visual Studio saves the location for nearly every window (e.g. Solution Explorer, Output, Find and Replace), so be thorough. Visual Studio saves design and debug layouts in a single file so arrange windows in both views.
Go to Tools->Import and Export Settings. Choose Export selected environment settings and click Next.
The next dialog prompts you to select the settings to export. Uncheck all settings except General Settings/Window Layouts so only window placements are saved, like in these screen shots (I can't expand the window so here are two shots of the same dialog):
Enter a name for this settings file and save it. Repeat until you have a settings file for each layout. There is no limit to how many settings files you may have.
Make a macro to load each settings file
Go to Tools->Macros->Macro Explorer to show your macros. There should already be a macro project named MyMacros. Create an empty macro project if none are visible. Double click any module in any of these projects to open up the macro editor.
Enter this into the editor. You want one main sub that takes a path to a settings file and loads the file, and one sub for each individual file that calls the main sub. If you save your settings files to the same folder you can have the per-file subs pass just the file name instead of the whole path.
Imports System
Imports EnvDTE
Imports EnvDTE80
Imports EnvDTE90
Imports System.Diagnostics
Public Module Module1
Private RootFolder As String = "C:\Path\To\Folder\With\Settings\Files\"
Private Sub ImportSettingsFile(ByVal FileName As String)
FileName = IO.Path.Combine(RootFolder, FileName & ".vssettings")
DTE.ExecuteCommand("Tools.ImportandExportSettings", "-import:""" & FileName & """")
End Sub
'Corresponds to file layoutA.settings
Public Sub ImportLayoutA()
ImportSettingsFile("layoutA")
End Sub
'Corresponds to file layoutB.settings
Public Sub ImportLayoutB()
ImportSettingsFile("layoutB")
End Sub
'Repeat for each settings file
End Module
Close the macro editor and go back to Visual Studio. You're done! Running any of these macros will load the settings files automatically. You can double click any of the subs in Macro Explorer to run them. If you display Macro Explorer at all times this might be sufficient, but if you don't or would rather not have to click the macros to run them we can do even better ...
Bind the macros to keyboard shortcuts or toolbar buttons
Go to Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard. This window allows you to change any keyboard bindings. Type "Macro" without quotes into the Show commands containing text box. This will show the macros you created. Select any macro, click in the text box titled Press shortcut keys, and enter the keyboard shortcut you want to use to run the macro. Hit Assign, then OK. You can now use this keyboard command to load the settings file.
Alternately, you can use a toolbar button instead of or in addition to a keyboard binding. Go to Tools->Customize. Select the Commands tab, select Toolbar, and select the toolbar you want to add the button to (Standard is the main toolbar). Click Add Command, select the Macros category, select the macro you want to add a button for, and click OK. You will have a new button on the toolbar that loads the window layout from that macro.
Keep in mind that keyboard shortcuts and toolbar buttons are themselves settings. If you import a settings file that overwrites either of them you will have to redo this last step. The window placement settings files won't overwrite these values because you only exported window locations. It's a good idea to periodically export and back up all settings, not just window settings, in case something like this happens and you want to recover non-window settings.
No, this is not possible. The website you found is indeed accurate:
There are four different window layout modes in Visual Studio:
Design View - this is the one you see when you start up Visual Studio. It's what most people refer to as the "normal" view.
Debugging View - this is the view that you get when you enter Debug Mode like when you are stepping through your code
Full Screen - the view you get when you go to View -> Full Screen (Shift + Alt + Enter).
File View - the lesser known view you can get when you open up a file in DevEnv.eve
The thing to remember here is that, both, your tool windows and your command bar customizations are saved separately for each state. There is no way to tell Visual Studio to use one state for all modes at this time. Additionally, when you shut down Visual Studio in any state, all four states are saved.
It's very strange that you would want to use the same window layout for all four modes. The same windows that are useful at design time are hardly ever useful during debugging, and vice versa.
For example, in Debugging View, I hide the Toolbox, Document Outline, and Property Manager windows. Then, I add the immensely useful Call Stack, Autos, Locals, Processes, Modules, and Breakpoints windows. None of the latter panes would be remotely useful to me in design mode, so I don't want them taking up screen space. But they're invaluable in debug mode, so I want them to show up. I also resize windows in the two different modes, based on their relative importance (such as the Properties window).
If you really still think that the two views should have the same window layout, the best you can do is rearrange the windows manually to achieve the same layout in both modes. I also recommend exporting your Window Layout settings (Tools -> Import and Export Settings) so that you have a fresh copy to revert back to in the case of disaster. I keep settings files containing my preferred window layout settings for single monitor (laptop), dual monitor, and triple monitor configurations.
I think your question was, "How do I use the same settings for both modes?" Am I right? Although #Chris gave an excellent thesis on how to stuff automagically, I wanted to point out, for anyone else that finds this question that there is an easy way to acheive same window settings for both design and debug modes.
Export your settings:
Choose General Settings/Window Layouts (in VS 2013) and save the file.
Open the file in an XML editor (or whatever... it's an XML file)
Find /UserSettings/Category/Design/WindowProfile and copy the entire node.
-- This assumes your Design view is the one you want to use for both modes.
Find /UserSettings/Category/Debug/WindowProfile and replace it with the one you copied from Design.
Save and re-import.
I have one of these settings files for home, remote, and office.
Many people try to turn off this feature because of strange behaviors (glitches) of VS windows on multi-monitor configurations.
In such cases there is another option that can help:
Turn off Environment->General->"Optimize rendering for screens with different pixels densities"
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/830128/windows-layout-not-restoring-properly-in-multi-mon.html
I have an application that gets installed with a Wise installer (EDIT: Wise creates a Setup.exe file, not an MSI). Upon installation, an icon is set for a certain file type:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.auz\DefaultIcon = C:\Path\To\App\some_icon.ico,0
Right after the installation, however, Explorer chooses to display this icon using the generic "white sheet + application icon" icon, which is different (and not provided by me).
Upon first launch, the application itself registers icons and other file associations, so that the last run version "owns" those documents. At that point, Explorer changes the icon for this file type and displays the correct one, but when I look at the registry, the value for DefaultIcon is exactly the same.
This is what I've tried so far
Removing all entries from the registry, and writing them myself.
After the installation, "touching" the value of DefaultIcon, and then launching a small little program that only calls SHChangeNotify(SHCNE_ASSOCCHANGED) (my program does this after updating the file associations in the registry).
After the installation, killing and restarting Explorer.
After the installation, using TweakUI to "repair" the icons on the desktop.
None of these work. The only way to get the correct icon is to let the program itself install it. I can't find any change in the registry. I'm pulling my hair off.
What I would like to avoid
Testing with another installer software
Changing the installation script too much (I don't have Wise itself, as the installer gets built on another machine on demand).
Embed the icons in the executable.
Any suggestions on how to get Explorer to display the correct icon after installation?
A couple of things come to mind:
why do you have the ',0' after the icon in the registry? That would limit the shown icon to one single icon. Better would be to have an icon file which contains several icons (same icon UI but different sizes/color depths) - Explorer has different icon views! Try removing the ',0' if your icon file only has one icon in it.
it may be that the registry is written last in the installer, after the explorer got notified of updates?
make sure the registry entry is written after the icon file is stored on disk
you should use the Wise installers own configuration to register the file type. Not sure, but I think explorer won't take any changes until the whole installation of an msi is finished, so calling SHChangeNotify() manually won't help. The msi has its own table for this, which Wise will add if you use the right configuration.
For Wise, do the following (instead of creating the registry keys on your own):
Under the Feature Details page group, select the File Associations page.
From the Current Feature drop-down list, select Core.
Click Add at the right of the window and select New.
The File Association Details dialog appears.
Click the Extension Details tab.
Browse to the QuickFacts directory, select the file QckFacts.exe, and click OK.
In Extension, enter: qft
Leave the defaults for the rest of the fields and click OK.
The extension .QFT is added to the installation. When an end user double-clicks a
file with this extension on the destination computer, the QuickFacts application
launches.
Save the installation
[Edit]
You may also missing required registry entries (the icon might not be enough for the shell to show it):
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.auz\(default) = auzfile
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.auz\shell\open\command = C:\Path\To\App.exe
Here's the solution.
Each file type (let's say ".auz" in this case) was registered with:
A DefaultIcon key with the path to the icon resource, and
A value for the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.auz\(default) value giving a description of the file type, e.g. "Foobar Document".
In addition to this, there was an entry for the "Foobar Document" document type, or more specifically, a key for how to open such documents from the shell:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Foobar Document\Shell\command\open\(default) = C:\Path\To\App.exe "%1"
Apparently, this key supersedes the value written for the specific file extension. Because the icons are external to the .exe file, Windows Explorer then used the first icon of the application to create an icon for all files of type "Foobar Document" (that "white sheet + application icon" icon I mentioned).
Now, what I had wrong was that the application itself does change the value of
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.auz\(default)
to a slightly different value when starting, say "Foobar 1.2 Document" (the problem with not being DRY). Thus, the link to "Foobar Document" was lost, and the .auz files got their icons after the first launch.
So I fixed this all by simply removing the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Foobar Document key altogether, and voilà!