High-DPI Installs

[pfennig]

Only today, after receiving Jason Strathmore's email "InstallShield Still Broken by Microsoft Security Update KB2962872",
we became aware of the option of high-DPI installs, available since 2004.
We're still using IA12 and the only thing DPI-related is "Screen DPI" from "Get System Settings".
There isn't anything in the help file, nor did I find anything here in this forum.

What exactly needs to be done to get high-DPI installs?
We tried a manifest that we use for our projects and renamed it to the name of the setup EXE.
Unfortunately, it didn't make a difference.

Thank you for any support.

[FrancescoT]

Dear Pfennig,

It is reffered to the fact that InstallAware setup themes have been designed and tested on high DPI screens from the very beginning.

Regards

[pfennig]

Here are three images of the initial IA installation form at different screen settings.

InstallAware at 125%

Resolution125.png (34.37 KiB) Viewed 19573 times

InstallAware at 150%

Resolution150.png (63.48 KiB) Viewed 19573 times

InstallAware at 200%

Resolution200.png (84.45 KiB) Viewed 19573 times

As you can see at 125% everything scales nicely, from 150% up the contents of
the form looks blurry, while the caption of the form looks as expected.

The same is the case with all other forms of the setup.
While it seems possible to eliminate the problem in the case of images the texts
remain an issue for which I'm looking for a solution.

[FrancescoT]

let me check.

Regards

[pfennig]

We solved part of the problem by tuning the manifest in dependent.exe.
It causes to properly display those forms we, the users, are able to control.
But the initial dialog, the one I posted above, still looks blurry, even in the
setup of InstallAware 18.

It's somewhat irritating because it seems that this issue hasn't been looked at
since Windows XP or 2004 respectively.

[FrancescoT]

Dear pfennig,

I just tried to see the High DPI effects using an IA 18 project and with scaling to 200% (Win 8.1).

Without embedding any Dpi-Aware manifest to the file "depends.exe", all the install dialogs are scaled correctly without any "blurry" effect, with the exception of the the first initialization dialog, that looks blurry.

With embedding a Dpi-Aware manifest to the file "depends.exe", all dialogs looks fine and scaled properly ... including the first initialization dialog.

So at the end, it seems to me that IA full supports High-DPI Installs, The only exception is the first initialization dialog ... but I suppose that our development team will be able to fix the manifest issue shortly.

Regards

[pfennig]

OK, thank you for trying this out.
It's strange that we come to different results even with IA18, though.
Maybe, it's because I'm running Windows 7.

Anyway, as I said, we're still using IA12 and without the manifest changes
our setups look like this under Windows 7, 8 and 8.1:

Setup with Alpha theme at 150%

IA12_Alpha_R150.png (75.47 KiB) Viewed 19483 times

As you can see, we're using the Alpha theme and even IA12 already supports
Windows 8, except proper High DPI.

So, I hope your programmers will find the solution for the initial dialog soon
and that it will be one that can be easily transferred to older versions.

[pfennig]

Four IA versions at 150%

IA_R150.png (179.64 KiB) Viewed 19407 times

The result of a bit more research:
All screenshots were taken in the same account with identical
conditions (150%, XP-style scaling unchecked).

Apparently the IA16 setup was the first were text scaled correctly.
Unfortunately, graphics look worse.

[FrancescoT]

Dear pfennig,

this may depend by the bitmap / Icon grafic used ... I'll send a note to our dev team.

Regards