Appearance Options / JExpress Wizard

Appearance Options

You can easily change the way your installers appear by adjusting the settings on this panel. Your JExpress installers use the best cross platform interface available today, Swing. This lets you know that when you design your installers on one OS, they will look very similar on all other OSes where they operate.

Click on the jump point or just page down to learn more about each setting on this panel.

Default language
Look and feel
Image filename
Image position
Buttons position
Default Language

Look and feel

Your JExpress installers use Swing, the best cross platform interface available today. Swing really lets you develop on one platform with confidence that your application will look good on other platforms, too.

Swing supports several looks so you can decide which one your installers use. If you'd like your installers to use the popular look and feel for the target system, then select Native. When your installer uses the Native look and feel, it means that it will probably be most familiar to your customers.

Some people like Sun's Metal look and feel. Sun considers this the best cross platform interface because it maintains a more consistent look between OSes.

Image filename

Each panel in your installers displays a graphic image. If you leave this field blank, then JExpress uses a generic GIF file with your installer. If you'd like to personalize your installer, then create a GIF or JPEG image. Simply fill in the full pathname to your image file.

The default vertical image is about 300 pixels in height. If you prefer your image to appear at the top of the installer, then we recommend that you use an image that is about 300 pixels in width.

If you use a different size image, then you should verify that all the panels format properly. Swing automatically resizes panels based on the size of all components, including the image file. If your image is too large, then some panels could be truncated. Swing does not adjust the image size, even if you change screen sizes.

You effect the size of the overall install window by the size of your image. Swing tries to keep your panels balanced so by growing or shrinking your image, you will impact the layout of the installer. This means that if you'd like the installer window to be larger or smaller, then by increasing or decreasing the size of your image, you'll change the size of the license window, etc.

If you want to distribute any GIF or JPEG files as part of your application, then you should include them in the Files panel. The image file specified in this field is only used during the installation.

Image position

You can decide where you want the image to appear. The options are: North/Top, South/Bottom, West/Left, or East/Right. The default position is at the left side of the installer panels. If you use the default image, then you should position the image at the North or South.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to verify that the image position looks good with all of the install panels. JExpress does not automatically verify that your image will fit with the layout you selected.

Buttons position

You can decide whether you want the buttons (i.e., Next, Previous, Cancel) to appear at the North/Top, South/Bottom, West/Left, or East/Right side of the panel. The default position is at the South/Bottom of the installer panels.

Be sure to verify the button position looks good with all of the install panels.

Default language

Select the default language you want your installer to use if your customer's machine doesn't support any of the popular languages that JExpress includes. The most widely known language around the world is English so we suggest you use that as your default language.

This field gives you the flexibility of deciding to use another default language. For example, if you know that most of your customers speak Spanish, then you can easily select Spanish as the default language.