Change the looks of your installation package on the Appearance page.
Show Advanced Installation button should always be on, except if you are sure that your setup packages will only be used by novices, who would be needlessly confused if they selected this option. If you disable this option then the end user will not be able to choose between installing for all users or for the current user or pick different installation folders or select which file associations can be created.
You can choose if you want to fill the background of the installer window with a gradient color or not. The gradient fill provides a nice visual effect.
Click the Installer Font button to select the font that should be used by the installation program. The font is not included in the setup program. Even if you were to add it under %FONTS% on the Files, it wouldn’t be installed when your installer first shows itself. So you need to select a font that is already present on the user’s system before the installer starts.
Segoe UI sized at 9 points is the font that Windows Vista and later use for built-in apps like the Control Panel and Windows Explorer. Tahoma sized at 8 points is what Windows 95 to Windows XP used. Windows Vista and later still include Tahoma. Windows 10 and 11 use Segoe UI at different sizes for modern apps like Settings. Select 11 points in DeployMaster for a similar experience. If you select Segoe UI as your font and your installer is run on Windows XP or prior then it will automatically fall back to Tahoma. If you select any other font and it is not available on the user’s system then Windows automatically substitutes another font. DeployMaster doesn’t control which font that is. Arial, Verdana, and Times New Roman are three other fonts that were already standard in Windows 95. Calibri, Cambria, Candara, and Constantia are some of the fonts introduced with Windows Vista. All of these fonts are still included with Windows 11.
If you’ll translate your installer into a language that uses a non-alphabetic script then Tahoma or Segoe UI may not be the optimal fonts. Consider using Leelawadee UI for Thai, Malgun Gothic for Korean, Yu Gothic UI for Japanese, Microsoft JhengHei UI for Traditional Chinese, Microsoft YaHei UI for Simplified Chinese, or Nirmala UI for the various South Asian scripts. These fonts were all introduced with Windows 8 or 8.1. If you need to support Windows 7 then consider Leelawadee (non-UI) for Thai, Meiryo UI for Japanese, Microsoft JhengHei (non-UI) for Traditional Chinese, or Microsoft YaHei (non-UI) for Simplified Chinese. Windows 7 has separate fonts for the various South Asian scripts. To support all versions of Windows, consider BrowaliaUPC for Thai, Gulim for Korean, MS UI Gothic for Japanese, MingLiU for Traditional Chinese, or SimSun for Simplified Chinese.
If you select a font size larger than 8 points then your installer automatically enlarges itself to accommodate the font’s increased height. Selecting a large font makes your installer more accessible to people with visual impairments. Selecting a slightly larger font, such as Segoe UI at 11 points, can make the installation experience more pleasant for everyone. Larger fonts are simply easier to read which makes for a more welcoming experience. The installer does not take the font’s width into account. Selecting a font that is very wide relative to its height or a monospaced font may cause some text to be clipped unless you shorten the text on the Language page.
The Ease of Access settings in Windows 10 and the Accessibility settings in Windows 11 have a slider labeled “make text bigger” that goes from 100% to 225%. Your installer checks this setting when it is run on Windows 10 or 11. It multiplies a font size of 9 points by this percentage and uses the resulting font size for your installer if that is larger than what you selected on the Appearance page. If you specified 15 points and the user has “make text bigger” set to 120% then your installer uses the 15 points you specified because 9 * 120% = 12 which is less than 15. But if the user set it to 200% then the installer increases its font size to 18 points. On older versions of Windows which don’t have this setting the installer always uses the 15 points you specified. So you can safely select this larger font size without risking it being doubled to 30 points by the “make text bigger” setting.
Your installer will not make itself taller or wider than the user’s display. If the user has a small screen and the installer wouldn’t fit if it used the font size you specified or that it calculated according to “make text bigger” then it reduces the font size to the largest size that allows the installer to fit on the screen while properly adjusting itself to the font size. The font size will never go below 8 points. At 8 points the installer fits even on the smallest screens that Windows itself is usable on.
The Completely cover screen background checkbox determines whether your installation program will cover the whole screen or not. This gives your installation software the gradient-filled background that has become typical for installation software on the Windows platform. It does not serve any purpose, other that its visual effect. When you check this option, several options for defining the looks of the background appear:
Change Top Color: Click this button to show up a color selection dialog box in which you can pick the color of the top of the background.
Change Bottom Color: Same story, but for the bottom color. The background is painted using a vertical, linear gradient fill.
Change Bitmap: Click this button if you want to display a bitmap in the top left corner of the background. This bitmap could typically be an application or company logo. Click Clear bitmap to get rid of it.
Transparent Bitmap: Mark this checkbox if you want the background bitmap to be transparent. The color of the lower-left pixel of the bitmap will be used as the background color. Wherever the bitmap’s pixels have this color, the background will shine through. If the lower-left pixel does not have the appropriate color, use a paint program to add one row of pixels at the bottom of the image using the desired background color.
Top label: Text to be displayed at the top of the background. This is typically the name of the application the user is installing. If you want the label to span across more than one line, hit Ctrl+Enter to insert a line break while typing in the text.
Top label font: Shows a font selection dialog box for the top label.
Top label color: Since the standard Windows font selection dialog box allows you to choose between 16 basic colors only, you can click this button to select any color you would like for the top label.
Shadow: Mark this checkbox to paint a shadow behind the top label.
Shadow Color: Select a color for the top label’s shadow.
The same options are available for the bottom label. This could typically be a company slogan, motto, copyright statement, or web address.