Dialog themes are predefined sets of images that give your end-user dialogs a unified and distinctive look. With the click of a button, you can select one of the available themes for your project, and InstallShield applies that theme to all of the interior and exterior dialogs, as well as the Setup.exe initialization dialog, in your project. You can easily preview each interior and exterior dialog from within the Dialogs view to see how it looks with the selected theme.

If you switch from one of the wide-style themes to a standard-width theme, the positions of any controls that are placed along the far left or far right sides of the dialog may change.
If you want to change the theme for your project and you also want to add a custom exterior dialog, change the theme first, and then add the custom exterior dialog. Otherwise, the dialog may not appear properly.

To change the dialog theme used for a project:

1. In the Dialogs explorer, expand the Themes folder.
2. Right-click the theme that you want to use, and then click Select.

InstallShield applies the selected theme to the dialogs in your project. In addition, InstallShield displays a red check mark on the selected theme’s icon in the Dialogs explorer.

To preview how a dialog in your project looks with the selected theme:

1. In the Dialogs explorer, expand the All Dialogs folder, and then expand the dialog item that you want to preview.
2. Click a language under the dialog item that you expanded.

In the center pane, InstallShield displays a preview of the dialog with the selected theme applied.

InstallShield does not currently let you create your own dialog themes. However, InstallShield includes many themes. For more information, see Available Themes and Corresponding Dialog Sizes in the InstallShield Help Library.

## Background Information on How InstallShield Applies Themes

If you switch from one dialog theme to another, InstallShield applies the theme to any dialogs in your project that match a specific width and height. Therefore, if you change the width or height of any of the dialogs in your project, and then you change the theme, InstallShield does not apply the theme to any dialogs that have a custom width or height.

For example, if you switch from a standard width theme to any other theme, InstallShield applies the theme to any dialogs that have a standard width and height: 374×266. If you switch from a wide theme to any other theme, InstallShield applies the theme to any dialogs that are 584×274.