We have included some new menu interface examples in CD-Menu Creator 2018. Below you can see two of the new menu examples:
You can use the menu examples as inspiration for your own menu projects or as basic templates when you create your own menus.
See also
> CD-Menu Creator 2018: New Menu Examples
The User Options setup dialog box in Visual Installer has been updated to also support radio buttons. So you can now choose if you want to use check boxes or radio buttons in the installation dialog box. When you use radio buttons, only one option at a time can be selected. The options are mutually exclusive.
Below is a basic example of how the updated User Options dialog box may look like when using radio buttons:
As before, you can set the text for the dialog box title, the information area and the options freely. Switching between check boxes and radio buttons is done via a new setting in the editor:
More information about the ‘User Options’ setup dialog
In this blog post from 2016 you can read more about the User Options setup dialog. There is also a long tip available in this tip page.
Using one and the same font in a software with all versions of Windows, graphic cards, displays and DPI settings, and expecting the result always to be perfect, is nearly an impossible mission. And then you must also take into account that people also prefer different fonts.
To handle this situation in the best way in our software we have updated Visual Installer and CD-Menu Creator to allow you to choose your own font for the editor. We have included some fonts that you can choose among, and we will increase the list with fonts with time.
Too large font size?
The new font handling in Visual Installer and CD-Menu Creator will also solve the problem with “too large font size” that sometimes happens when a system font with a requested size is not available in the system and the substitute font (chosen by Windows) is somewhat larger and the text will therefore not fit in the space that is reserved for the text. This is a rare condition, but will happen in special circumstances *.
In the latest version of Visual Installer and CD-Menu Creator this problem does not exists anymore because both editors will automatically search for a font that has the same size as the font that has a problem. So the editors will automatically switch font if this problem occur. But you can, of course, choose another font manually if you prefer to do this.
How to change font for the editor manually
In Visual Installer you can change font by choosing the Editor options menu item in the Special menu. In CD-Menu Creator you can change font by choosing the Options menu item in the File menu. In both cases there will be a new Font tab available in the dialog box that is shown. Via this new tab you can change the font for the editor.
*) This problem may occur if the connected display is over a certain resolution when Windows is first installed in the computer. Windows will then set the DPI to 120 instead of the usual 96, and the “MS Sans Serif” font that Visual Installer’s and CD-Menu Creator’s editor uses as default may be affected by this. The font may not be available in smaller sizes. If this problem happens, it does not help that you afterwards change the DPI from 120 to 96. The font size is still not available. More information about this problem is available in this blog post on Microsoft’s blog.
We have now released a new version of our setup tool SamLogic Visual Installer. The name of the new version is SamLogic Visual Installer 2018 and the version number is 11.5. Some new features in the new version are:
• Supports the latest version of Windows 10.
• Supports Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7 and 4.7.1.
• Supports AutoCAD 2018.
• A new function makes it easier to add all files in a folder to Visual Installer’s file list.
• The ‘User Options’ setup dialog box has been updated to also support radio buttons.
• The code signing function now supports USB tokens and EV digital certificates.
• All redistributable binary files are now code signed with an EV digital certificate.
• New script commands has been added to the script language.
• The XRUN script command has been updated to handle more options.
• You can now change the font for Visual Installer’s editor.
A detailed list of new features in Visual Installer 2018 is available on this web page.
A new version of our menu designer tool CD-Menu Creator has now been released. The name of the new version is SamLogic CD-Menu Creator 2018, and some of the new features in the new version are:
• Supports the latest version of Windows 10.
• You can now change font for CD-Menu Creator’s editor.
• Creation date of a menu is automatically saved in the Version tab of the editor.
• All redistributable binary files are now code signed with an EV digital certificate.
• Improved error handling.
• New menu interface examples have been included.
A more detailed list with the new features is available on this page.
Sometimes it is necessary to write-protect a file after it has been installed on a hard drive. If you use Visual Installer to install your files, this is very easy done if you follow these steps:
1. Open your project file or create a new one.
2. In the File list tab, select the file that you want to write-protect.
3. Choose the List – File copy options menu item.
4. Select the Turn on write protection option:
5. Click OK.
If you want to be able to update the write-protected file during a future update, you can also select the Replace also write protected file option:
Now when you install your files, the file that you selected at step 2 above, will be write-protected after the installation. You can check that this really works as expected by right-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer and thereafter choosing the Properties menu item in the local menu that is shown. In the General tab in the Properties dialog box, the Read-only check box should be checked (as shown in the picture below):
See also
> How to set file copy options in Visual Installer
> The ‘Inst’ column in the ‘File list’ tab in Visual Installer
When you install a software it can sometimes be useful to remember the installation date. In Visual Installer you can do it by using the %DATE variable, which retrieves the current date from the system during an installation. The contents of the %DATE variable can then be stored in the Registry or in an INI file.
If you want to store the current date in the Registry during the installation, you can enter a line like this in Visual Installer’s Registry tab:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MyCompany\MySoftware :: InstallationDate=”%DATE“
See also the picture below (the screen dump is from the Registry tab):
The %DATE variable will be replaced with the current date when your files are installed in the end user’s computer. The picture below shows how it may look like:
See also
> Variables in Visual Installer
With the SETPERM script command in Visual Installer’s script language you can change permissions for a folder on the user’s hard disk during an installation. But what happen with the sub folders? Are the folder permissions inherited?
Yes. They are normally. But if you really want to be sure that all sub folders have the same permission settings as the main folder, you can set the permissions for them separately. For example like this:
SETPERM %DESTDIR\Documents, PERM_ALL
SETPERM %DESTDIR\Documents\Text, PERM_ALL
SETPERM %DESTDIR\Documents\Word, PERM_ALL
With this method you can also give a sub folder another folder permissions than the main folders. For example like:
SETPERM %DESTDIR\Documents, PERM_ALL
SETPERM %DESTDIR\Documents\Pdf, PERM_READ
See also
> How to give a standard user write permission to a folder in Program Files
> Visual Installer’s Scripting Language
We have an international newsletter that is targeted for our international customers where we publish information and news related to our products and our company. We send the newsletter about 1-2 times / month. In the newsletter you can read about:
Below you can view all newsletter issues that we sent during 2017:
> 08/2017 – How to add a folder tree to Visual Installer’s file list
> 07/2017 – How to protect a Visual Installer installation with a license key or password
> 06/2017 – How to make an installed program run with administrator rights
> 05/2017 – Summer special – 30 tips for Visual Installer and CD-Menu Creator
> 04/2017 – How to add social media icons to a menu interface
> 03/2017 – The new Visual Installer 2017 is compatible with Visual Studio 2017
> 02/2017 – The new Visual Installer 2017 has now been released
> 01/2017 – The new CD-Menu Creator 2017 has now been released
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you want to subscribe to our newsletter you can visit the web page below:
> Subscribe to SamLogic Software’s newsletter
If you already have created a folder structure on your hard drive, with the files that you want to install, and want to create a similar folder structure on the destination drive, there is a very useful function in Visual Installer that you can use. The name of the function is Add tree and you can access it via the List menu in Visual Installer, by choosing the List – Add – Add tree menu item (see the picture below):
After you have chosen this menu item, the following dialog box is shown:
Via this dialog box you can browse to the folder, with sub folders and files, that you want to add to Visual Installer’s file list. For example like:
You can see the current folder path to the right of the Folder field name in the dialog box.
After you have selected your folder, you can click on the OK button to continue. The following dialog box will now be shown:
In the option frame (above the three buttons) you can choose how the folder structure will be built in Visual Installer’s file list. You can choose between replacing the root level of the folder tree with the %DESTDIR variable, or add the folder tree to the %DESTDIR variable.
When you have decided how you want to build the folder tree, you can press the Add files button. Now Visual Installer’s file list will be filled with the files and folders. And you can see how many files that were collected in the No. files field name in the dialog box:
To return to the file list, just press Close in the dialog box.
How to obtain only folders of a folder tree
Instead of collecting the files in a folder tree you can also extract only the folders (directories) of the tree and skip all files. In this blog post we explain how to do this.
