[wpkg-users] Message box for notifying users

[mscdex]

Right now the messages would work when wpkg.js is executed, after the user
logs in. This situation is fine by me because I have certain domain groups
assigned to at least a certain wpkg base profile (e.g. students, teachers,
office staff) and so wpkg would need to be executed after logon. I have the
client machine(s) set to not display the desktop shell until the logon
scripts have completed and because of that all they see is a wallpaper
background while wpkg is running (no sense in giving the user the idea wpkg
is finished when it isn't, especially if an auto-reboot is required). I
thought during this time if wpkg was performing any tasks, a useful
message(s) could be shown so that the they do not assume the system has hung
or has crashed.

Also, I thought it would be especially nice to have a message displayed if
an automatic reboot was needed after installing a new
application/upgrade/removal, something like "rebooting in 5 seconds..." The
other reason it would be nice that is specific to my situation is I use a
program called Deep Freeze to freeze the hard drives from users making
unwanted changes. This program requires reboots to thaw/freeze the hard
drive, so a rebooting message here would possibly be handy as well so they
do not think their system is flipping out with all the rebooting and all :)

I will post some screenshots this evening. Right now it's fairly simple and
is currently used for informational purposes as I said before and not as a
method for acquiring user input.

On 6/18/08, Tomasz Chmielewski <mangoo at wpkg.org> wrote:
>
> mscdex schrieb:
>
> (...)
>
>  So a few days ago or so I set out to code something in jscript that would
>> accomplish just this. My solution makes use of Internet Explorer automation
>> and works for IE5.00 through IE7 (on both Win2k (no/any service packs) and
>> WinXP (tested with SP2)). The code could use some more work and I may clean
>> it up and continue work on it in the following days, but I was mainly
>> concerned about it displaying the same for all mentioned browser versions.
>>
>> My message box solution right now features the ability to simply specify
>> an (optional) "title bar"/header as well as the message text. Both the
>> background and foreground colors of the header and message text can be set,
>> and the message text can be optionally centered.
>>
>> One last thing, on systems with IE7 installed I had to incorporate a
>> workaround to get messages to look like they do in IE5 through IE6. The
>> reason for this is because with IE7, there has been a security check put in
>> place to keep scripts on websites from resizing less than 250px wide and
>> 100px tall (and from setting certain unallowed window positions).
>> Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a way to get around this using pure WSH
>> scripting so I wrote a tiny little AutoIt script (and compiled it to exe
>> form) that bypasses said limitations and it only executes when IE7 is
>> detected.
>>
>> If anyone is interested in what I currently have, let me know and I'll see
>> if I can host it somewhere.
>>
>
> I suppose it will work when the user is already logged in? Wouldn't it be
> annoying to the user?
>
> You may check something similar - see
> http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/2008-February/thread.html#2628("wpkg via Group Policies" thread).
>
> Do you have any screenshots etc.?
>
>
> It could be also worth to make a separate page in wiki for such
> user-contributed stuff.
>
>
> --
> Tomasz Chmielewski
> http://wpkg.org
>
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