Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 21:36:04 GMT

Thanks for the explanation. Install-on-demand can actually be useful. A shame though that we get to face it so often. So this begs the question, why can't WI and Word better work together so WI can install the missing components in 1 run instead of several?

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

BryanK — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 23:20:47 GMT

8: On the Office/Windows Installer issue, that's because Word is trying to dereference several different WI-controlled GUIDs, and none of them are installed. So every single time it tries to dereference one of them, WI pops up the dialog, which you have to cancel.

Then, eventually, you've made it through all the GUID-dereferencing code in Word, and it comes up.

(WI uses GUIDs because that makes it possible to set components to "install on first use", where they're present according to the app, but not taking up disk space until they're needed. Apparently many Office programs abuse this feature, because even if I install Office XP Pro in "full" mode, with nothing set to "install on first use", I still get the WI dialog the first time I open each Office program. Which means each Office program is trying to use something that isn't installed. Sigh.)

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:19:09 GMT

>as indicated by the text "Your XYZ is now ready to use."

The user should've been notified in step 2. This is exactly what i meant in my earlier comment in your previous cancel button post. After the keyboard, mouse, time and date settings the setup goes on to install, and afterwards it's not possible to go back and change something. It would be very convenient if there was a warning that the next step goes on to install, so i can go back and forth between pages to make sure eveything is allright, and then proceed with installation. I should be warned that there is no back button afterwards.

Similarly, the Windows Installer has a cancel button, but clicking it just re-opens it. So I click again, again, again, again and again, so I'm getting frustrated because I really DIDNT want to open up (for instance) Word. And suddenly Word appears, even though I had clearly indicated I clicked it by accident or have changed my mind.

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

Raymond Chen - MSFT — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 06:57:51 GMT

PSM_CANCELTOCLOSE is legal only for property sheets. Using it for wizards results in undefined behavior.

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

Jeremy Boschen — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 06:53:10 GMT

You can disable the cancel button using the PSM_CANCELTOCLOSE message because a wizard has no OK button. Maybe this isn't supposed to work?

As an example... http://www.mutexed.com/code/JoinExt/wizard-iv.png

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

Norman Diamond — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 05:11:30 GMT

> (Yeah, this is nearly a dup of a posting
> from last month.

No problem ^_^ Just remember that when people put requests in the suggestion box asking you to dup postings from more than a month ago ^_^

> Didn't realize it when I wrote it.)

Yeah well of course. It hadn't been posted yet ^_^

Better be careful though. If you don't have a Cancel button for your postings then some people will think you're not a wizard ^_^

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

David Candy — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 02:23:03 GMT

Who disabled your Cancel button? Time to report to the debugger room RCH3N and get fixed.

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

Miral — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 02:03:26 GMT

You're assuming that people actually read the wizard pages. That assumption is frequently unwarranted :)

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

PatriotB — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 22:31:36 GMT

It would be nice to be able to disable the Cancel button at least on the final "conclusion" page of the wizard. For example, many Setup programs use wizards; after the "Progress" page (which does the actual install) you see the "Conclusion" page saying something like "Program XYZ has been successfully installed." And here you'll see a Finish and Cancel buttons. It would be nice to be able to disable the Cancel button here, since the process has already been completely finished.

re: Why is there no message for disabling the Cancel button on a wizard?

Raymond Chen - MSFT — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 21:13:43 GMT

Well at least this time through I have some design guidance.