Custom Banner Image for Windows Installer

[syxolk]

Now that we have a project logo and icon we can customize the windows installer (hooray)!

It works by adding two images banner.jpg and dialog.jpg to the package and this two lines in indentex_template.wxs:

<WixVariable Id="WixUIBannerBmp" Value=".\banner.jpg" />
<WixVariable Id="WixUIDialogBmp" Value=".\dialog.jpg" />

It currently looks like this:

Image sizes are 493x58 and 493x312.

Images can be JPG or BMP. Windows 8 added support for PNG and other formats but we want to support Windows 7 (?). Since bitmaps are quite large (dialog.bmp is 452 KB) I decided to use jpegs with quality 100%.

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/40639894
• https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa367830.aspx

[mp4096]

Yep, I like it! :+1: Would you mind opening a PR?

[syxolk]

Guide for even smaller images 🤣:

• Load raw image in GIMP
• Click on Image -> Mode -> Indexed...
  • Choose Generate optimum palette and Maximum number of colors: 256
  • Click Convert
• Now export the image as bitmap (*.bmp)
  • Enable Run-Length Encoded
  • Click Export

Results:

Image	PNG (optipng -o7)	JPG (quality=100%)	BMP (palette=256, RLE)
banner	2.7 KB	7.5 KB	2.8 KB
dialog	5.1 KB	15.1 KB	6.5 KB

[mp4096]

Ugh, I have a bad feeling about this. Does WiX work properly with RLE?

[mp4096]

And I have to check the colours... I used the full RGB palette.

[mp4096]

Ok, the images are so small that I can't see any difference whatsoever.

[mp4096]

what is it, a banner for ants?

[syxolk]

Does WiX work properly with RLE?

I'm pretty sure it works because someone suggested it in 2008 (!): .BMP files can be RLE-compressed. I don't know if they support any other compression algorithms.

I used the full RGB palette.

GIMP generates a palette of 256 colors so that it closely resembles the colors of the image. It's not a predefined palette.

[mp4096]

GIMP generates a palette of 256 colors

OMG this is crazy. I've completely missed the 'optimal' part. Sure, I have fewer than 256 colours.

[mp4096]

Closed in #43