Summary

How do the DestinationFolder and InstallChangeFolder Dialogs Work?

Synopsis

The predefined dialogs DestinationFolder and InstallChangeFolder work together to allow the end user to select a new destination folder for the installation via a graphical view of the directory structure. This article explains how they work. Article" Use InstallChangeFolder Style Dialogs to Allow Users to Set Other Properties." explains how to use dialogs like these to work on any property.

Discussion

Controls and Events on DestinationFolder

On the DestinationFolder dialog, the PushButton control named ChangeFolder has two events associated with it. You can view these events by highlighting ChangeFolder in DestinationFolder's Dialog Behavior view. The first event, SpawnDialog, spawns the InstallChangeFolder dialog.

The other event is [_BrowseProperty] and its argument is INSTALLDIR. If a property in brackets is specified in the place of an event, that property will be set to the value given in the argument field. When ChangeFolder is clicked, _BrowseProperty will be set to INSTALLDIR. At the same time, InstallChangeFolder will be spawned, as mentioned above.

Controls and Events on InstallChangeFolder

It is necessary to set _BrowseProperty because there are three controls on InstallChangeFolder that use _BrowseProperty: a DirectoryCombo, a DirectoryList, and a PathEdit. Although all of these controls look and interact with the user in different ways, they all do the same thing: display the path specified in their Property and allow the user to change the value of that Property. In this case, the property is _BrowseProperty (which was set to INSTALLDIR). When the user selects directories with any of these controls, the associated property, in this case INSTALLDIR (via _BrowseProperty) will be changed.

After users finish changing the value of the property to their liking, they will click OK. The OK button not only has an EndDialog ControlEvent associated with it, but also a SetTargetPath ControlEvent. SetTargetPath is given _BrowseProperty as an argument. It will check the path given by its argument to see if it is valid and writable. If it is not, it will block further events associated with its control.

Additional Information

• For more information, see Knowlege Base: "Use InstallChangeFolder Style Dialogs to Allow Users to Set Other Properties."