Customizing the action progress text

[NetSeeker]

I use a lot of actions in my setups. For example i have several DLL calls and a lot of actions around them.

When my setup shows the action progress, the message text is quite useless like:

call Function
start programm
create shortcut.

It would be better, if i can customize this action messages like:

Starting Database Server "Demoversion"
Installing SQL Schema on "Demoserver"
Installing Test Data on "Demoserver"

that is more meaningful for my customers.

This can be simply done im SUF would behave like this:
If i set %ShowActionProgressDlg%

to FALSE - > Hide the dialog
to TRUE -> Show the dialog with your messages
to anything else -> Show the dialog and display the content of %ShowActionProgressDlg%

This is quite simple and gives me full control over the displayed message. I simply assign this variable with messages as i need it.

[bab]

Netseeker,

I really like this suggetion. Being able to give your users good and sometimes specific feedback about what is going on during an install I think is important.

Thanks,
Barb

[Darryl]

To a certain extent you can dynamically change the text of the messages at runtime if you choose to.

Basically all of the messages in Setup Factory are taken from Message ID's in the language module that is currently being displayed. Therefore, you could potentially open the language module to determine what message ID is being used at that point in time and before it is used in your install, assign a new string to it using an Assign Value action. The message IDs are actually Setup Factory variables without the "%" characters, so you could give that a try to see if it helps. You can find the message IDs in each language module found in Design->General Design, Languages tab.

Hope that helps.

[NetSeeker]

Good tip!

My example for a DLL call:
Assign Value(MSG_PROG_EXECUTE_FILE=Some custom Error text)
Call DLL Function(...

Now you will get not the boring "Execute File..." message.
You will get the custom text.


Maybe you like to include this tip in the Documentation.
That helps a lot to customize the user interface.