Feature Settings

Enter a brief description of the feature. A feature’s description is displayed on the CustomSetup dialog (or, in Advanced UI and Suite/Advanced UI installations, on the InstallationFeatures wizard page) when the end user clicks a feature or subfeature.

When you type a value for this setting, you are creating a string entry and setting its initial value for all of the languages that are currently in the project. As an alternative to typing a new value, you can click the ellipsis button (...) in this setting to select an existing string. For more information, see Using String Entries in InstallShield.

Project • In Advanced UI and Suite/Advanced UI projects: When you type a value for this setting, you can include one or more formatted expressions that contain property names, environment variable references, and other special strings; at run time, the installation expands the values of these expressions. To learn about the syntax that is available for these expressions, see Using Formatted Expressions that Advanced UI and Suite/Advanced UI Installations Resolve at Run Time.

Select the folder on the target system into which the feature's files should be installed, or click the ellipsis button (...) to select or create a directory.

Note • If you want the destination to be configurable at run time, the destination folder that you select must be a public property (containing all uppercase letters).

For more information, see Setting a Feature’s Destination.

Indicate how you want the feature presented to the end user in the CustomSetup dialog (in Basic MSI, MSI Database, and Transform projects) or the feature selection dialog (in InstallScript MSI projects).

This setting does not have any direct impact on whether a feature is installed. A feature is not automatically installed if it is not visible—it just cannot be deselected if it would otherwise be installed, or selected if it should not be installed.

For more information, see Displaying Features to End Users.

Select the appropriate advertisement option for this feature. Available options are:

For more information, see Advertising Features.

This setting lets you specify one or more conditions that the Advanced UI or Suite/Advanced UI installation should use to evaluate whether the feature should be selected for installation by default on the InstallationFeatures wizard page.

For example, if you want a particular feature to be selected by default on target systems that have a particular version of Windows, you can create a condition that specifies that version of Windows. Depending on how you configure the condition, you can have that Advanced UI or Suite/Advanced UI feature selected by default on the InstallationFeatures wizard page when an end user runs the Advanced UI or Suite/Advanced UI installation on that platform. Unless the end users deselects the feature, the Advanced UI or Suite/Advanced UI installation installs it.

To add one or more new feature conditions, click the New Condition button in this setting. InstallShield adds a new row under the Condition setting. Select the appropriate option—All, Any, or None—from the list in this row. Then in this row, click the New Condition button, and select the appropriate option to continue building the conditional statement.

If one or more conditional statements are configured, the Condition setting says (Condition). If none are configured, the Condition setting says (Empty).

For descriptions of each of the condition settings, see Building Conditional Statements in Advanced UI and Suite/Advanced UI Projects.

This setting lets you specify one or more conditional install levels. If a condition is true on the target system, the feature is given the corresponding install level.

At run time, the feature’s install level value is compared to the value of the global public property INSTALLLEVEL to determine whether the feature should be selected for installation by default.

To specify one or more conditions, click the ellipsis button (...) in this setting. For more information, see Setting Feature Conditions.

When you add a condition, InstallShield adds a new row to the grid of feature settings. The new row shows the install level for the feature, as well as the corresponding conditional statement that you added.

If one or more other features must be installed whenever the selected feature is installed, click the ellipsis button (...) and specify the other required features. For more information, see Using the Required Features Setting.

This setting is available for subfeatures; it is not available for root-level features.

Indicate whether you want the subfeature’s state to be determined by its parent feature. Available options are:

Note that if the selected subfeature’s parent feature is not installed, the selected subfeature cannot be installed.

This setting is especially useful if you want the subfeature to be hidden on the InstallationFeatures wizard page, but its parent feature is not hidden.

Indicate the severity of allowing end users to deselect the feature in a Custom setup type. Available options are:

Your script can read this setting using the InstallScript function FeatureGetData with the FEATURE_FIELD_FILENEED constant. Depending on the return value, your script can display a message to alert the end user if a critical or highly recommended feature is deselected.

If you want to password-protect the feature, enter a password.

You can specify a different password for each feature. You can also specify a password for the entire installation (in the Media Password setting on the Setup.exe tab in the Releases view).

Note that the default script does not automatically validate a feature’s password. You must modify the script to validate the password by inserting a dialog function (such as AskText) that prompts the end user to enter a password, and then calling the FeatureValidate function from within the script.

Caution • Experienced hackers may be able to extract this password from your release. If security is a critical issue, it is recommended that you not depend solely on this password protection functionality.

Specify the folder in the disk image in which the feature’s files should be placed if the CD_ROM Folder(s) option is selected in the Media Layout panel of the Release Wizard, or if the feature’s check box is selected on the Custom Media Layout panel of the Release Wizard. If either of these conditions are met but no folder is specified, the feature is placed in the root of the disk image or, if it is a subfeature, in the same folder as its parent feature.

Folder names on CD-ROMs should conform to ISO 9660 (Level 1) standards. That is, folder names should be no more than eight characters long (with no extensions), and use only the characters A-Z, 0-9, and _ (underscore).

By putting a folder structure on your CD-ROM, you can allow your product to be run from the CD-ROM. The folder structure on the CD-ROM does not need to mirror the folder structure that would be installed to a hard drive. All that is necessary is that your product be able to work with either folder structure.

This functionality is typically used only for CD-ROM distribution; for other distribution media, you usually want to compress all features into .cab files.

Project • For InstallScript Object projects, the value of this setting has no effect on where the object’s files are placed when the object is included in an installation project.

This setting lets you specify an InstallScript function to be called after this feature is installed. Select the desired function from the list.

Only exported functions appear in the list. Exported functions have this prototype:

export prototype FunctionName( );

If you want to associate an HTTP address with the feature, enter the HTTP address in the following format:

http://www.domain.com

The address that you enter can be accessed from within the script using the FeatureGetData function with the FEATURE_FIELD_HTTPLOCATION constant.