W(iX)TF



  • [wtf installer]

    This is the installer for WiX, a Microsoft-recommended toolchain for generating MSIs.

    Note how it looks completely nothing like a MSI install. In fact, the WiX developers are so confident in Windows Installer that they don't offer any MSI for their software at all.

    The gear spins btw. That's the install progress.



  • Maybe it's red because it's the Christmas Release



  •  Looks like a proper Modern UI application to me [although the red is a bit garish IMHO]



  •  I'm curious why the icons are aliased.



  •  I'm not seeing the WTF. The WiX installer was built using WiX. That UI is part of a bootstrapper that chains several WiX MSIs. Looking at the BootstrapperApplicationData.xml  in %TEMP% it should even install .NET 4.0 if it isn't on the box.


  • Garbage Person

    @MathNerdCNU said:

     I'm not seeing the WTF. The WiX installer was built using WiX. That UI is part of a bootstrapper that chains several WiX MSIs. Looking at the BootstrapperApplicationData.xml  in %TEMP% it should even install .NET 4.0 if it isn't on the box.

    TRWTF is that MSI doesn't support prereqs and chaining.

     

     

     



  • @Weng said:


     TRWTF is that MSI doesn't support prereqs and chaining.

     

    Not entierly true. [*1]

    You can natively chain MSIs with the Microsoft tools. The problem is if one of those suckers requires a reboot(e.g. because a file is locked) then the chain won't execute and Microsoft says tough-titty. You can pass a "STFU" parameter to MSIs but that doesn't un-break the chain.

     Atleast that has been my experience with InstallShield/InstallScript(A WTF in and of itself. Who doesn't love a C-BASIC hybrid language?).

    My WTF-bias is showing. I deal with installations/deployment challenges day-in day-out. This is on the bottom of my radar. Or top of my feature(s) request list.

    Installation developers enjoy the pain....

    *1  MSDN Says so!


  • Garbage Person

    @MathNerdCNU said:

    Not entierly true. [*1]

    You can natively chain MSIs with the Microsoft tools. The problem is if one of those suckers requires a reboot(e.g. because a file is locked) then the chain won't execute and Microsoft says tough-titty. You can pass a "STFU" parameter to MSIs but that doesn't un-break the chain.

    Huh. It's been a long time since I gave a rat's ass about packaging. Thinking back, I think I knew this, but since our target clients didn't have WI4.5 installed, we couldn't chain the Windows Installer install.....

    Still doesn't explain why everyone and their dog uses fucking bootstrapper exes.

     



  • @Weng said:

    Still doesn't explain why everyone and their dog uses fucking bootstrapper exes.

    If Microsoft would just bundle MSVC++, .NET, and DirectX with the OS in the first place and keep them up to date (but backwards-compatible) via Windows Update we wouldn't even be in this mess. That's 90% of dependencies right there.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    [wtf installer]


    Ugh. What is the deal with modern UIs? It really feels like we've decided to let 8 year olds with a box of crayons (and not a big box, no, but a small 24 color box) design our UIs. Either that or modern UI designers are seeing all these 'reboot' movies and started thinking, "Hey, let's Reboot some old UI ideas! Genius!"


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dhromed said:

    I'm curious why the icons are aliased.
    Probably because they're defined as abstract shapes rather than as pictures, and then rendered by an engine that automatically handles the aliasing. It's the only way to get a UI that handles scaling of pictorial elements to very high resolution displays without looking crap. (It's a pity that the actual icons being given this treatment are so boring, but that's Microsoft for you…)



  • @dkf said:

    Probably because they're defined as abstract shapes rather than as pictures, and then rendered by an engine that automatically handles the aliasing. It's the only way to get a UI that handles scaling of pictorial elements to very high resolution displays without looking crap. (It's a pity that the actual icons being given this treatment are so boring, but that's Microsoft for you…)

    I wish more OS's were like this. That way we don't have to include several different scale PNGs of the same image. Android's trying to be it but last I checked developing icons for Android involves using a tool that takes in a svg and spits out the pngs the application really uses.



  • @dkf said:

    Probably because they're defined as abstract shapes rather than as pictures, and then rendered by an engine that automatically handles the aliasing. It's the only way to get a UI that handles scaling of pictorial elements to very high resolution displays without looking crap.

    Yeah, but why is everything aliased? It's all jaggy and crap looking.



  • @dkf said:

    Probably because they're defined as abstract shapes rather than as pictures
     

    Obviously, but that doesn't answer my question.

    @dkf said:

    rendered by an engine that automatically handles the aliasing.

    Apparently it doesn't handle the aliasing. It's not applying an antialias filter.

    @dkf said:

    without looking crap.

    The icons look like crap.

     

     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    Yeah, but why is everything aliased? It's all jaggy and crap looking.

    Usually the answer to questions like that is, "the aspie who took the screenshot went way out of his way to disable every Windows feature even slightly related to making things look nice on screen in the interest of 'speeding up' his computer."



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    Yeah, but why is everything aliased? It's all jaggy and crap looking.

    Usually the answer to questions like that is, "the aspie who took the screenshot went way out of his way to disable every Windows feature even slightly related to making things look nice on screen in the interest of 'speeding up' his computer."

    1) It's my screenshot. Nothing else on the computer looks like that.

    2) My laptop's CPU is underclocked by half and throttled to 50% on each core by the shitty BIOS (it's stuck in thermal protection mode), so I get performance that feels like* a Pentium 4. it would possibly make a difference.

    * I don't know how to objectively measure CPU quality absolutely. Here's CPU-Z's CPU tab if that means anything.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    My laptop's CPU is underclocked by half and throttled to 50% on each core by the shitty BIOS (it's stuck in thermal protection mode), so I get performance that feels like* a Pentium 4. it would possibly make a difference.
     

    Why is it stuck there? What did you break?

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