I have written an installer for a piece of software. It requires another piece of software in order to run (the .NET Framework, which is already installed on the majority of Windows machines). If not found, I do the following:
- disable the “next” button in the installer dialog
- tell the user what’s going on and why they cannot continue
- provide the user with a web link to install .NET
- provide the user with a “Check again” button that checks whether .NET is installed; if so, the “next” button is enabled and the error message disappears, otherwise nothing visible happens
Here are two screenshots of what is happening:
What bothers me is:
- the “Check again” button seems out of place, and it’s not obvious that the user has to click on it
- after installing the prerequisites, it’s two button clicks (Check again + Next) to go to the next page instead of one
- if I just automatically reactivate the “Next” button, the user may not notice that the UI has changed
- if I just automatically switch to the next page, it might confuse the user
Do I have ways to improve this workflow in a user-friendly way?