General Information
This view allows you to specify contact information, product information, and general setup features through simple property fields. While the bulk of the information you enter here will show up in various end-user dialog boxes, some is purely for your own use, such as the Comments property. You can determine whether or not your users can repair, remove, or change your product from the Add/Remove panel in Windows 2000. This view contains a number of important fields, such as the Destination Folder property, technical support information, and your product code. See The General Information View for more information.
The General Information view contains five subviews, each of which is described below:
Project Properties
There are only three project properties, Setup Author Name, Setup Languages, and Authoring Comments. The most important of these three is the Setup Languages property. The languages you select for this property are added to your setup. A string table is added for that language, and when you build your setup, those strings can be used for globalized versions. All of this depends on whether or not you have purchased additional language support from InstallShield.
Summary Information Stream
The Summary Information Stream is information stored within your .msi file. This information can be accessed by right-clicking on an .msi file and selecting Properties. Select the Summary tab from the dialog that appears to view the package's summary information. All of the information listed in the Summary Information Stream view is required to achieve Windows 2000 logo. One property, however, is necessary for any setup. The Package Code property contains the GUID for your setup. This GUID is used to identify your setup to the operating system. When an .msi package is launched, the GUID is compared to all the currently installed software packages. If it matches one of those, the setup goes into Maintenance mode. If no match is found, the Windows Installer service assumes this to be a new package and runs the setup in standard mode. A GUID is assigned to your setup by default, but you can change it in the Summary Information Stream property sheet.
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 properties are those properties that appear in the Windows 2000 Add/Remove Programs applet. Windows 2000 logo requires these properties to be accurately filled in. In this property sheet you can choose the icon you would like associated with your application, as it appears in the Add/Remove Programs applet, support contact information, as well as the buttons you would like displayed in the applet, such as Change, Remove, and Repair.
Product Properties
The Product properties contain such information as your application's name, version number, and the default destination folder for all of your setup's files. Many of these properties are required for the Windows 2000 logo.
String Tables
String tables allow you to keep all of your setup's run-time strings in one location in order to ease the process of translating those strings into other languages. The string tables that are displayed in the String Tables view coincide with the languages you selected to support in the Setup Language Project property. These string tables can be exported to a text file for translation and then imported back into your setup when the translation is complete.