Step 5: Configure splash screen

In this step of the generated launcher wizard, you can configure a splash screen for your application.

The behavior of the splash screen can be defined in the General section of this step:
- Show splash screen
  When this option is checked, a splash screen will be shown during the startup of your application. On Windows, this splash screen will be displayed by native code an provides for extremely fast user feedback.
- Image file
  choose an image file for the splash screen (of type PNG or GIF). If the project has already been saved, a relative file path will be interpreted as relative to the project file.
- Hide splash screen when first application window is shown
  If this option is checked, the executable generated by install4j will monitor the state of your application and hide the splash screen as soon as a window is opened. If you want to hide the splash screen programmatically, you can use install4j's splash screen client API.
- Splash screen is always on top
  If this option is checked, the splash screen remains always on top of other windows opened by your application. On some platforms, this option has no effect.

The Status line and Version line sections allow you to position the text lines on the splash screen and configure their font. The status line is dynamically updatable with install4j's splash screen client API while the text of the version line may be overridden with a command line option of the install4j compiler.
You can configure the following properties of a text line
- Text
  The (initial) text displayed in the text line.
- Position
  The x and y-coordinates of the text line on the splash screen. The origin of the coordinate system is the top left corner of the splash screen window.
- Font
  The font used for drawing the text line:
  - Name
    The name of the font. Please choose a common font name that is likely to be available on all target platforms. If unavailable at runtime, a platform dependent standard dialog font will be used as a fallback.
  - Weight
    The weight of the font. 8 fine-grained font weights are offered as a choice.
  - Size
    The size of the font in points.
  - Color
    The color of the font. By clicking on [...], a color chooser dialog is brought up.
In both text lines, you can use the %VERSION% variable to substitute the version entered on the application info tab of the general settings step.

To visually position the text lines with mouse and keyboard on the actual splash screen image, please click on the [Position text lines visually] button. The visual positioning dialog will then be displayed. On exiting the dialog with the [Ok] button, the X/Y coordinate text fields (see above) will be updated for both text lines.

Click [Next] to proceed to the next step or [Cancel] to leave the generated launcher wizard without applying any changes.