HTML Control seems to lack... usefullness

Bruckster · Post by **Bruckster** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:02 pm

I'm in the middle of building a relatively involved setup project. One of the reasons we decided to go with InstallAware was it's ability to display web media during install through the use of the HTML control on progress dialogs. When I got into the nitty-gritty however, I've learned that this control is restricted to the point of being nearly useless in my case.

First off, I seem to be able to set every property of the control except the one I really need to... the URL it browses to. I know I have to add a support file called index.htm, but that's not intuitive or flexible. What about displaying different content to the user when they're uninstalling? I can use "Object Rules" to change other properties, but not what file is loaded by the HTML control. I've tried using a Copy/Move Local Files command just before the dialog is displayed to copy $SUPPORTDIR$\\install.htm over top of $SUPPORTDIR$\\index.htm, but this doesn't seem to work.

Which brings me to the really annoying part... lets suppose I just accept that I can only have one .htm file. It appears that the browser functionality is completely crippled so I can't redirect to a live webpage. I've tried META refresh, page onload script, and even an embedded IFRAME, none of which seem to work.

I'm assuming this control is based on the Microsoft IWebBrowser2 COM object. If so, was it a deliberate choice to disable all of it's usefull functionality? WHY!?!

Am I missing something?

Alex_Ronquillo · Post by **Alex_Ronquillo** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:22 am

Bruckster,

Your intuition was right. You can rename files in the support dir to index.htm to show different htm files. However, your approach was wrong. Try renaming the files with the MoveFileA function in Kernel32.dll using the Call DLL Function plug-in. This is because Copy/Move Local Files command needs "Apply Install" to have effect.

Bruckster · Post by **Bruckster** » Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:33 am

Ok. so that covers the issue of needing a different doc for install/uninstall, but what about the browser's crippled functionality? is this on purpose? Pointing the browser at an online source is extremely usefull, and in our case a requirement, as we need a way to have our users sign up for an online account as they install.