Advanced UI Projects vs. Suite/Advanced UI Projects

InstallShield 2016

Project • This information applies to the following project types:

Advanced UI
Suite/Advanced UI

Edition • The Advanced UI project type is available in the Professional edition of InstallShield. The Suite/Advanced UI project type is available in the Premier edition of InstallShield.

Advanced UI and Suite/Advanced UI projects enable you to develop bootstrap applications for installations and create a unified, fully customizable user interface. The following table compares various capabilities and traits of these two types of projects.

Summary of Differences Between Advanced UI Projects and Suite/Advanced UI Projects

Comparison Category

Advanced UI Projects

Suite/Advanced UI Projects

Edition of InstallShield

For more details on the differences between the Premier and Professional editions, see Upgrading from Other InstallShield Editions.

InstallShield Professional

InstallShield Premier

Project file extension

.issuite

.issuite

Supported file format for primary packages

For information on selecting the appropriate package file format, see Guidelines for Adding Packages to an Advanced UI or Suite/Advanced UI Project.

.msi package,
.msp patch,
InstallScript package

.msi package,
.msp patch,
InstallScript package,
.exe package,
.appx package,
Web Deploy package (.zip),
Windows Installer transaction

You can also include Basic MSI and InstallScript projects (.ism) as packages in a Suite/Advanced UI installation. At build time, InstallShield first builds the specified releases in the InstallShield projects, and includes them as packages in the Suite/Advanced UI installation that it generates.

Note that the ability to create and build a Suite/Advanced UI installation that includes a sideloading UWP app package requires Windows Vista or later or Windows Server 2008 or later on the machine that has InstallShield or the Standalone Build.

Number of primary packages that you can include in the project

For more detailed, see Primary Packages vs. Dependency Packages in Advanced UI and Suite/Advanced UI Projects.

1

This capability enables you to create a contemporary, customizable user interface for a single package.

1 or more

This capability enables you to create a contemporary, customizable user interface for one or more packages.

This capability also lets you package together multiple separate installations as a single installation while providing a unified user interface.

Support for including InstallShield prerequisites in the project

To learn more, see Including InstallShield Prerequisites (.prq) in an Advanced UI or Suite/Advanced UI Project.

Include as many InstallShield prerequisites as needed as .msi packages, .msp packages, and .exe packages, depending on the type of file that is configured to run for the prerequisite.

Include as many InstallShield prerequisites as needed as .msi packages, .msp packages, and .exe packages, depending on the type of file that is configured to run for the prerequisite.

Support for indicating which packages are primary packages and which are secondary packages

To learn more, see Primary Packages vs. Dependency Packages in Advanced UI and Suite/Advanced UI Projects.

Limited flexibility. You can add one .msi, .msp, or InstallScript package as a primary package to your project.

Any InstallShield prerequisites that you include in your project are added as dependency packages. This cannot be changed.

Full flexibility. You can add any of the supported package types to your project and easily specify whether they are primary or dependency packages.

Any InstallShield prerequisites that you include in your project are added as dependency packages, but you can override this and mark them as primary packages.

Support for creating actions and scheduling them to run during the appropriate run-time events

To find out more, see Using Actions to Extend the Behavior of a Suite/Advanced UI Installation.

Not available.

A Suite/Advanced UI project includes an Events view that lets you define actions that you want to occur at run time on target systems. You can schedule an action to occur during a particular event in the Events view, or you can assign to a package in the Packages view. In addition, you can schedule an action to occur when a wizard page or secondary window is opened or closed, or when an end user uses a control (for example, clicks a button).

Support for build events

For more information, see Specifying Commands that Run Before, During, and After Builds.

Not available.

A Suite/Advanced UI project includes release settings that let you schedule commands that run before InstallShield starts building the release, as well as after InstallShield has built and signed the release.

Run-time language support

For more information, see Run-Time Language Support in InstallShield.

The end-user interface of an Advanced UI installation is limited to a single language that you determine when installing InstallShield.

Create a single installation that displays end-user text in multiple languages. Change wizard pages and messages to any one of 34 additional languages using pre-translated strings.

Support for distributing your installation to virtual machines that InstallShield provisions at build time

To learn more, see Distributing Releases to a Virtual Machine that InstallShield Provisions at Build Time or on Demand.

Not available.

After each successful build of your installation, InstallShield automatically reverts a virtual machine (VM) to a designated snapshot, powers on the VM, and copies your Suite/Advanced UI installation to the VM to make it available for testing. This capability makes it possible to reduce testing time and eliminate manual steps.

See Also