Installer - Configuring Form Components

     


  For more information on form screens and related concepts, please see the corresponding help topic.
  On the left side you see the list of currently configured form components. The  [Add] button shows a popup window where you can select whether to add
  • a standard form component, i.e. a form component from the list of default form components that is made available by install4j or a form component that is contributed by an installed extension. A registry dialog will be shown where you can select the desired form component.
  • a form component that is contained in your custom code. New types of form components can be developed with the install4j API. In your custom code configuration you can specify code locations that are scanned for suitable classes. A class selector will be shown where you can select the desired class.

If you select a single form component in the list of form components, you can edit its properties on the right side, if you select multiple form components, you can copy them to the clipboard or delete them with a single action. If your selection is a single contiguous interval, you can move the entire block up or down in the list.

  After you add a form component, the list of form components shows it with its type display name. This is often enough, however, if you have multiple instances of the same form component alongside, a custom name makes it easier to distinguish these instances. You can assign a custom name to each form component with the  [rename] button. The type name is still displayed in brackets after the custom name. To revert to the default, just enter an empty custom name in the rename dialog.
  install4j offers an inter-process clipboard for form components. You can  [cut] or  [copy] form components to the clipboard and  [paste] them in a different instance of install4j. Note that references to launchers or references to files in the distribution tree might not be valid after pasting in this case. Pasted form components are appended to the end of the list unless sequence restrictions with respect to the the already present form components force a different order.
  Common properties of form components are:
  • Initialization script
    A script that initializes the form component. To configure the contained principal component, such as a JCheckBox, use the configurationObject parameter (if available). This script will run after the internal initialization of the form component, just before the component appears on the screen.
  • Reset initialization on previous
    If set, the component will be initialized each time the user enters in the forward direction. Otherwise, the initialization will be performed only once. This setting affects both the internal initialization as well as the initialization script.
  • Insets
    The "Top", "Left", "Bottom" and "Right" properties allow you to specify insets around the form component.
  You can preview a form screen with the  [Preview] button which is also available on the property page of a screen. The preview does not show the actual screen, it shows an installer window with typical elements and a form that fills the entire content area of the screen. The actual screen might have a different visual appearance and the form might be smaller. However, the layout of the form itself will be the same at runtime.