Using Interactive Progress Flash

You may use interactive Flash movies as part of your installation dialogs, and in particular inside a progress dialog, to educate and entertain your users while your product is installing. Flash movies provide an unprecedented rich medium for use as installation billboards, with no limits on your creativity.

Adding a Flash Control to a Dialog

In order to display interactive Flash movies in your dialogs, you first need to add a Flash control to your dialogs.

1. Open the dialog in the Dialog Editor.
2. Choose the Browser tab on the component palette.
3. Select and add the FlashFrame control to your dialog.
4. Double-click the new control to bring up the Define Interactive Characteristics window.
5. Choose the Object Behavior tab, and under the Receives Information drop-down, select Installation Billboards.

Adding a Flash Movie to a Setup

After adding the Flash control to your setup dialogs, you will want to add the movie itself.

1. Set the file name of the Flash movie to add as movie.swf.
2. Display the Project Manager.
3. Add the SWF file as a support file.

If you later need to remove or update your movie, simply modify it as a regular support file. The Project Manager will maintain a reference to this file in your project and the file itself will be accessible in your project folder.

Flash Runtime Deployment

To display Flash movies, the player runtime needs to be present on the end-user system. The moment a dialog containing the FlashFrame control is shown, InstallAware will automatically attempt to install the player runtime if it is not already available. If the installation fails, the dialog will not render the movie, but no setup error will occur - your installation will continue normally.

The runtime file that is used in this automated installation process is automatically added to your project as a support file under the name flash.ocx. This addition occurs moment you add a movie to your setup. You may replace the default runtime file with a newer/older version of the runtime. To do so, simply add the desired version of the runtime file as a support file under the name flash.ocx to your project. You may also delete the runtime file from the list of support files, however in this case if the end-user system lacks the runtime, none of your movies will render (although the setup itself will not be affected).