I'm trying to create an installer for windows (and potentially mac) that can install a browser extension for chrome, firefox, and for IE, and I'm totally stuck. Primarily I live in web-development land and I don't even really know where to start. This installer might eventually also include something like a bing toolbar for a kickback to us on a per-install basis. I'm hoping for something that doesn't require us to learn how to author a windows installer, but if that is unavoidable what are some good services / apps we could use?
Any help, would be GREATLY appreciated.
Firefox: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Adding_Extensions_using_the_Windows_Registry
Chrome: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/external_extensions.html#registry
The WiX toolkit and community may be a good place to start wrt IE.
I presume that you are imagining something like LastPass's installer
For Windows there is probably not much you can do to avoid using Windows Installer, therefore I recommend that you take a look at Wix, which is an open source toolset from Microsoft for generating installers that will shield you from a lot of problems.
I don't have any first hand experience with installing browser plugins but I am guessing that installing your plugins isn't all that different from installing a regular program - you need to place a bunch of files and set some registry keys and so on. What registry keys and so on should be documented by the browser developer (and you probably already know this since you have done your plugins).
Unfortunately, I cannot help you when it comes to the Mac.
Related
We have developed a .Net 4.0 VSTO Excel AddIn in VS2010 that we are deploying via ClickOnce. Our deployable seems fine on Windows XP but is extremely problematic when installed on Windows 7. The problems all seem to relate to when the AddIn needs to be removed via Excel (i.e. it has been soft deleted by Excel [eg. due to failure, etc] and it is then 'Remove'd by the user via the Excel | Options | AddIns | Manage | COM AddIns dialog.
The above leads to a situation where an AddIn is re-installed after the above has occurred, it is not exposed within Excel - i.e. the Excel AddIns tab (which would normally appear if there is one or more AddIns installed) vanishes forever. It becomes even more of a problem when we are developing/debugging, as we are renaming/removing AddIn instances on the fly - so much so that developing VSTO on Windows 7 is no longer feasible
Note that the AddIn is not in the hard deleted (disabled) list - it has been removed. I have tried installing/re-installing/uninstalling, rebooting, removing registry items (cleaning up cache/after-uninstall), removing file system files from C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Apps\2.0, clearing cache (via mage and/or rundll32 as per Clear the .NET-downloaded application cache without Mage?). There seems to be a clear difference of behaviour between XP and Windows 7.
Has anyone had similar problems ?
The only alternative I can see is a deployment project with a fully blown MSI, however this is no where near as neat - requires local Admin access, etc
Many thanks
Travis
Not sure if you have read about the tutorials about publishing Office solution using Clickonce. If you haven't, you can find them via the links below. Worth reading.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/bb772100(v=vs.100).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/bb608591(v=vs.100).aspx
Regarding using windows installer, it's not extremely hard to do, especially with Visual Studio 2010 setup project. Here's a very detailed tutorial that can guide you through all these. It helped me a lot when I was trying to deploy the Excel add-in, and I hope it'd help you too in some way.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff937654.aspx
Also you might want to ask yourself these questions to determine whether or not using Clickonce/Windows installer is the right choice.
When it comes to your choice in deployment technologies, you don't
need to limit yourself to just one option. The key is to choose the
right tool for the right job. While there is no single rule or simple
answer, there are some general guidelines you can use to help make the
best decision for your specific needs.
Does the application install any COM components?
Does the application require registering any components for COM-Interop?
Does the application install any services? Does the application have to
install to a specific location or to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC)?
Does the application have any components that are conditionally
installed, based on the operating system or runtime environment?
Does the application require user input at installation time?
Does the application require configuration of system-level services such as
Active Directory or COM+?
After the application is installed, does it create files, write to the
registry, or affect the system in some way that would leave resources behind when the application is removed?
If you answered yes to any of
these questions, then Windows Installer is the best choice for
your needs. However, if you don't need to address the scenarios
described in the list above, then ClickOnce is an excellent candidate
for your deployment solution. If you want to leverage the distinct
benefits provided by ClickOnce, then understanding the capabilities of
ClickOnce early in your application design process is critical.
Deploying an early version of an application with ClickOnce, but then
belatedly realizing a need to move to Windows Installer, would create
a difficult upgrade path that can be avoided through careful up-front
planning.
From my experience, on one of my production projects we have also used MSI. And problems with click once were avoided. So my answer - yes you need to have MSI Project or MSI installations. And with MSI installations you can either use default MSI Project or external, e.g. Wix or Wise Installer or something else. Second way with custom installer is much more harder.
For situations with removing I've used mage and manual delete add-in from cache and registry. It helps, but looks like hacks.
Also each time when dealing with VSTO ClickOnce unclear, I've thought to use some external libraries. Unfortunately I haven't such opportunity to use something 3rd party to make my work easier due to requirement to project. But you can check and try. May be Add-in-Express libraries will help you, especially when they have good technical support.
What we found was that the way to get ClickOnce working for VSTO on Windows 7 was to do this within Excel - i.e.
Add/Remove Programs : uninstall
Excel | Options | AddIns | COM | Go
Add | browse to the ClickOnce setup.exe | OK | etc
Close down Excel
Go into Excel
AddIn appears
I'm sure you can play with the Add/Remove programs uninstall (versioning) so the user doesn't necessarily have to manually uninstall
ClickOnce is gr8 when it works - it's journey to get there tho and needs to be tightened up big style
I am currently building an application and want to have an installer and automatic silent updates for it.
Dropbox, Spotify and Chrome all are amazing at updating without anyone noticing. So I took a look at the Dropbox Roaming Folder in AppData and found a file named DropboxUpdateHelper.exe with an NSIS Icon. In the Spotify folder I could only find a SpotifyHelper.exe and a mentioning of NSIS in the Terms.
Is there a tutorial of how to install an application inside the Roaming Folder and have a silent auto updater? I am not fixed on NSIS but would prefer an open source and free installer.
NSIS has the INetC plugin that can be used to download things from the internet but I don't know if there is an auto update tutorial out there. You might also want to take a look at the VPatch plugin...
There are many variables to think about here:
Should your main application look for updates or just run the updater on application (or windows) startup so it can check?
Are the files on the server signed or do you have other ways to detect invalid/corrupted/MitM updates?
Do you require access control/DRM before downloading/applying updates?
How will you handle major version number updates? Will you support more than one major version or force upgrades?
Do you require administrator rights to update? UAC handling?
How are you going to support upgrading from 1.0 to 1.2? Update to 1.1 first or support every possible minor version upgrade path?
I'm sure there are many other issues you also have to think about. You should probably try to answer all these questions before you start coding. During development you might find other questions or that you have to change the design completely.
IMHO, this is not a simple question and I don't think you will be able to find a drop-in solution that fits your exact design/requirements...
It is easy to download files from internet using NSIS (there are several plug-ins for this purpose: NSISdl, InetC, ...) but such functionality is more about coding.
There is no exact solution for this - as Anders said you need to specify every detail to achieve required behaviour.
I have an application for Windows Phone 7 that I need to bundle up and send to several doctors for a content review. Ideas on how this might be done? I can't expect the docs to install the full SDK, but if I could bundle the emulator with it that might work, or if there's an easy way to convert the app to a Windows EXE that would as well. All suggestions welcomed!
While the theory is that since it's SIlverlight it should just run on the desktop. Years of Compact Framework development have taught me that this theory is almost never correct and getting it to work is often a real chore.
Microsoft has not yet delivered a stand-along WinPhone emulator (no idea if they will, but they did for WinMo) so for now that option is off the table. Getting your end user to install the stand-alone emulator is a fair bit of work anyway.
To be honest, my experience has been that just doing a Camtasia capture of the developer screen while you step through the app is one of the easiest ways to get ideas across to these types of groups. No, the end result isn't interactive, so they can't clock on buttons themselves, but if you walk through the feature they want to see, you can usually answer 95% of the questions this way.
When you need to address that other 5%, my experience has been that it's easiest to just send them a physical device with the app installed.
If they are (or have ready access to someone who is) fairly tech-savvy, shipping a Virtual PC image of a PC with the emulator installed and the app installed on it sometimes works.
Dot NET code using MS libraries is partially upwards compatible and most runtime classes present on a mobile device are also available on desktop Windows (see MSDN docs for details). So create a copy of your source code, ask visual studio to create a desktop .exe from it, it'll tell you it can't for several reasons, and you will need to recode some sections of it, resize the frame window etc. to make it work.
If one is careful about what methods one uses, I have managed to actually use the exact same .EXE file on the desktop without problems!
You simply cannot present the application without the SDK, since Windows Phone 7 applications rely on a completely different subset of .NET Framework and require an emulator to run XAP packages. Although you might say that it's the same Silverlight, don't forget about Microsoft.Phone and derivatives - you need the SDK in order for those libraries to be properly handled.
Also, you cannot convert a WP7 application to a Windows executable due to difference in platform architectures.
What you could do is simply allow the doctors to test your application through TeamViewer or similar products.
i think a "killer app" for winphone7+silverlight would be a desktop browser based emulator. want to try the app? just have the store run the emulator in the browser. (yeah, lots of technical hurdles, limited multitouch etc, but it would be pretty slick!)
The reason I ask is mostly due to how Google Chrome installation works once you click the "Accept and install" button from Firefox. After you click the installation is started directly and when it's completed Chrome itself starts up.
Firefox does not show any "Save" or "Confirm" dialogs after you click the Install button (on Chrome install web page).
Now, is this standard behaviour? Or might it be due to having an old version of Chrome already on the computer (Note: The new version was still installed from Firefox).
Seems a bit risky to me, all you have to do is fool the user to click something and then you can do whatever you want on his machine, or? Personally I thought things like this only worked with IE/ActiveX.
Looking at the code of the chrome download page, they seem to be using three mechanisms:
Standard download
OneClick (using the google updater plugin)
ClickOnce (using the .NET Framework assistant plugin)
ClickOnce is widely available due to the pervasiveness of .NET 3.5 SP 1 (in which it is bundled).
This is absolutely not standard behaviour. It looks like it is some kind of extension in Firefox. This will not work in Opera, IE or Safari. For those they might use different methods. For IE maybe ActiveX. The rest just downloads a small setup file.
Microsoft has a propritary solution which is always included in their development programs, called ClickOnce. It needs .NET Framework. .NET Framework installs a Firefox extension for ClickOnce, and for everything else you can just run the setup.exe.
Google's updater is standard and open source, (called Omaha) but there are no open source server implementations as yet. It can be found here.
The way I understand it working is that when you download a file you trigger the updater with an ID and it takes care of the installation and maintenance of the program.
(speculative) I suspect the old installation or rather its updater took over at that point. As for the risk: If the Chrome guys did their homework (and I suspect they have), then Chrome will check for signatures on the file, etc. before running anything. That's standard behavior for updaters (sane ones, at least) and prevents abuse at that point.
i got this weird popup while installing GAE. Any ideas ?
alt text http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/f2fa08b9c7.jpg
I had this problem also, do you have an existing GAE installed? or GAT?
you can run the installer with msiexec -i /vi*x packageinstall.log to get a lot more information. I did all kinds of crazy registry edits and and other articles found on the web.
My question to MS is here
Finally after running the force uninstaller (as mine said it was installed but not functional) I finally got it going.
Guidance Automation without proper guidance, that is. I just uninstalled it. This is clearly a buggy software from Microsoft.