6.4 Views

Visual Studio .NET presents all the Microsoft Installer Setup project types (i.e., Setup projects other than Cab projects) in the same way: it provides several views onto the project, letting you explore and configure the various aspects of your installation. You can open any of these views by selecting the appropriate item from the project context menu's View submenu, shown in Figure 6-3. These can also be selected from the main menu's View Editor submenu. (This submenu will be present on the View menu only if you select an item from a Setup project in the Solution Explorer.) Visual Studio .NET will also display buttons corresponding to each of these menu items at the top of the Solution Explorer when you select a Setup project.

Figure 6-3. Setup project views

The File System view lets you choose which files are to be installed as part of your application. The Registry view allows registry keys and values to be created on installation. You can register file extensions and MIME types for your application with the File Types view. The User Interface view allows you to select and customize the dialogs that will be shown during your application's installation. If you need to perform any operations not supported by Windows Installer, you can supply code for these under Custom Actions. Finally, the Launch Conditions view lets you specify prerequisites for the system. (For example, you might make your application refuse to install on certain OS versions.)

Not all views are available on all project types. The User Interface view is not present on Merge Module projects. Cab projects present no views at all.