Adding Installation Dialogs

Microsoft® Visual Studio® Installer provides several installation dialogs you can include in your installer package (.msi) file. These dialogs present information about your product's features, services and support, and registration to your users during the installation process. Some dialogs also help users set some product installation options.

Visual Studio Installer includes several dialogs by default in a new installer project, for both local and network product installation. These dialogs will be displayed to your users when they run your product installation unless you delete them from the installer project. For information about deleting dialogs from an installer project, see Deleting Installation Dialogs.

By default, these dialogs are included in a new installer project and are to be displayed when a user installs your product on a local machine:

  • Welcome.

  • Select Installation Folder.

  • Confirm Installation.

  • (Installation) Progress.

  • (Installation) Finished.

You can customize which dialogs to include in an installer project. For more information, see Customizing Installation Dialogs.

You can also add any of these additional dialogs to the installer project to display during product installation on a local machine only.

  • "Splash" screen.

  • License Agreement.

  • Customer Information.

  • (Product) Read Me.

  • Register User.

To add dialogs to display during product installation

  1. In the Project Explorer window, expand the Target Machine node under your installer project.

  2. Double-click User Interface in the Target Machine node.

    The User Interface editor is displayed.

  3. In the User Interface editor, right-click any node displayed under the Install Dialogs heading.

  4. Select Add Dialog from the context menu.

    The Add Dialog dialog box is displayed.

  5. Select the dialogs you want to add to the installation run-time user interface, and then click OK.

    The selected dialogs are added to the installer project and shown in the correct section of the Install Dialogs hierarchy. (For example, if you added the Splash dialog, it would be shown in the Start section of the Install Dialogs hierarchy.)

    The dialogs you added — along with all dialogs listed in the Install Dialogs section of the User Interface editor — will be shown to your users when they install your product on a local machine.