LabVIEW Idea Exchange

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Kevin.Shirey

Installer enhancement

Status: Declined

Any idea that has received less than 2 kudos within 2 years after posting will be automatically declined.

LabVIEW Projects can use an icon in the exe, but not when running in development, and not in the built installer. 

 

Add to the LabVIEW project to have a property to set a project icon. With the Project icon, when running in development mode, it can use that icon instead of the standard LabVIEW one. Extremely useful when trying to give demos, screen shots to send to customers and building an exe is not working, feasible or designing on the fly. There is a hack you can do using the shell32.dll that on open of any LabVIEW panel, it can rewrite the icon, but then code must be added for any and every panel to show the icon. Also if the window name changes, you have to call the same code again. 

 

The installer also does not inherit the icon from the executable being installed. Add an option to add an icon to the installer and have it embedded in the setup.exe. Also include the registry setting for DisplayIcon = Icon path to exe or to defined icon. I've currently been able to change the setup.exe icon using the Resource Tuner application (www.heaventools.com for $50). It's as simple as changing the IconGroup 128 with your own icon and save the exe. This embeds the icon to show up in Windows Explorer and as the icon when running the installer.

 

The wrinkle is that the installer does not have any pointer in the Add/Remove list for Windows for the icon. You have to know the ProductID and ProductCode which changes every time you build the installer, as it is in the setup.ini file at the bottom. Going to the 32bit or 64bit registry (depending on what you are installing), you have to add a new string key "DisplayIcon" and it can point to any icon file or the exe using the path.exe,0 to represent what icon to use. The path to the reg key is somthing like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{E851D69F-49EE-4B9C-BAE7-58AB782E801A}\DisplayIcon. I'm currently developing an exe to run after the installation to set the registry key properly. It takes command line arguments for the Product Name (search registry for the GUID), path to icon/exe to set. This way each installer uses the same executable (LabVIEW built) to set the icon in the add/remove list properly. 

Kevin Shirey | CLA | Champion | Senior Project Engineer II | DMC
11 Comments
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

> it can use that icon instead of the standard LabVIEW one.

 

Where would you see this icon? I don't know where you're intending to use this setting.

Kevin.Shirey
Member

The icon is on the built Installer. So you would see it as an embedded icon on within Windows Explorer, or any shortcut or Autorun program. You would also see it on the upper left corner of the installer for branding. This is part of the tool Resource Tuner has to alter the Icon of the Setup.exe for the installer. 

Lastly, the registry edit alters the icon shown in the Programs and Features list in Windows. It points to the installed EXE and uses that icon. 

We have requirements on our product from a vendor to adhere to strict branding rights and icons is one of them. 

Kevin Shirey | CLA | Champion | Senior Project Engineer II | DMC
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

sinequanon -- you miss my question ... I meant where did you expect to see it in the dev environment. You talk about it being useful during demos, etc, and that's why it needs to be an icon on the project instead of on a particular build specification. But I don't see where in the UI such an icon would appear.

Kevin.Shirey
Member

Ah. It should be a project based setting for an icon for the use in the development. 

There is a setting in building an EXE to use an Icon. Why not in the Project? 

 

Mockup is below. This setting would then allow running any code from this project uses the set icon.

 Project Mockup.png

Kevin Shirey | CLA | Champion | Senior Project Engineer II | DMC
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

Nope. Still not answering my question. 🙂 Here's a picture of a VI running in the dev environement. Where would you expect to see your ADDA logo in this picture?

 

Untitled.png

Kevin.Shirey
Member

running.png

Kevin Shirey | CLA | Champion | Senior Project Engineer II | DMC
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

Ah.

 

I sincerely doubt that NI would ever add anything to let that happen. You'd be removing the LabVIEW trademark from our windows, hiding the fact that this is LabVIEW, which NI has a vested interest in promoting. We enable you to build your own applications, and you do not have to include our logos in your finished product, but we wouldn't want to help someone to reskin the LabVIEW dev environment to hide that aspect. That would just be helping counterfeiters.

 

You might be careful doing this hack yourself... I think there's a section in the EULA about removing NI trademarks from the product.

 

I'll leave the idea open... if it gets a lot of kudos, maybe the conversation could be had. But I wouldn't expect it to go anywhere.

Intaris
Proven Zealot

Removing the tiny LV icon in running windows is against the EULA?  You can't be serious.

Kevin.Shirey
Member

As with most requests with NI, I don't expect this to go into any notable action or properly reading through the entire post. It is a nice to have for development, but a REQUIREMENT for US to have proper branding on a PRODUCT installer built from LabVIEW. 

 

The post later describes the 'don't care' attitude towards installations and follow-though with the ability for an executable icon shown, but nothing for the Installer icon or product feature removal icon in Windows. Any notable program you purchase has an installer icon within that list including... National Instruments!? Yes. However they put little effoft towards their customers of LabVIEW to have the same ability,

 

Shown in the image the National Instruments Software uses an icon. The other NI Installers shown do not have an icon. ANY Installer built from LabVIEW will not use an icon. I believe NI should take us seriously and offer a product icon on the Installers LabVIEW creates. Installer Icons.png

Kevin Shirey | CLA | Champion | Senior Project Engineer II | DMC
AristosQueue (NI)
NI Employee (retired)

sinequanon: My comments were strictly about the development environment. I did not address the separate issues of the installer or the resulting installed code.