Wix custom UI for SQL Database installation

Question

This is my very first wix project. I downloaded wix 3.6 rc. My installation project includes 2 wcf and 1 silverlight projects. Everything works fine with default Wix UI. But now

Answer 1

Read up on the WiX UI extension in the .chm. Choose the dialog set that is most appropriate for your installer. Then you can customize it accordingly. Let's assume you want to customize the WixUI_Advanced dialog set:

• Download the WiX source code
• Navigate to the source code for the UI extension located in src\ext\UIExtension\wixlib.
• Copy and rename the file *WixUI_Advanced.wxs* to something different such as *WixUI_Advanced_Custom.wxs*.
• Open the .wxs file and be sure to rename the UI Id to <UI Id="WixUI_Advanced_Custom">.
• Add *WixUI_Advanced_Custom.wxs* to your setup project.

Now you can reference your custom dialog set just like you would reference the other dialog sets in the UI extension. But the UI is not quite customized, it just provides the same functionality as the WixUI_Advanced dialog set. To add a new dialog, you need to create a new .wxs using the wix source as an example. Look at any of the dialogs in src\ext\UIExtension\wixlib for help. Then reference your dialog in *WixUI_Advanced_Custom.wxs* by adding and modifying the <Publish> elements to determine when your dialog is shown.

Answer 2

Finally I found an eye opener article on wix here How to add custom UI

After a long struggle to understand how wix works, the above link to codeproject helped me understand. Especially the part that explains creating UI (MyWebUI.wxs in that article) was the life saver.