InstallShield

The global de facto standard on more than 500 million PCs, InstallShield is a strategic application installer designed for traditional and agile development teams and their Windows-based installation and virtualized deployment requirements. Supporting the needs of today's sophisticated software producers for packaging standalone offerings and complex suites, InstallShield provides automated tools to productize, package and install software with minimal scripting, coding and rework.

More developers trust InstallShield to give their software a flawless, localized installation experience, keeping their users happy and support cost down. Download the free trial version of InstallShield 2012 now.

InstallShield 2012: Microsoft's Software Installer of Choice

The world has changed. Development teams are more distributed. Products are more complex. Users are more sophisticated. InstallShield 2012 continues to meet the exacting standards of today's agile software vendors, and exceed the expectations of today's sophisticated users.

• Supports packaging for both standalone offerings and complex suites.
• Delivers a fresh, positive and friendly "app-store-like" experience.
• Provides automated tools for software producers to productize, package and install their products in both MSI and virtual formats.
• Supports installation authoring, building and bundling requirements of decentralized agile development teams.

Suite Installations

Until now, there hasn't been a software installer solution that supports the complex product packaging requirements for a unified suite installation experience. With the new InstallShield Suite Project type, multiple products can be easily bundled together into a single, unified suite installation.

• A next generation setup launcher (Setup.exe) that can conditionally run multiple installations (.msi or .exe) and apply Windows Installer patches (.msp) as needed on target systems.
• An entirely new end-user interface with redesigned built-in wizard pages and a new wizard page editor.
• An integrated progress bar that presents a unified, visual indication of the overall status of the entire suite installation process.
• Settings to specify whether to have a single entry in Add or Remove Programs.
• A single installation that includes both 32-bit packages and 64-bit packages and runs only the appropriate packages on each target system.

Installation Streaming

Meeting the needs of a new generation of "app-store savvy" users means that installations must be painless, fast and virtually transparent. The new Installation Streaming feature reduces the downloading wait time required before installation can begin.

• End users need only download a small file to quickly start the installation.
• Based on the selected install options, only the required packages are downloaded from the web or extracted from the installation.
• Flexible options for specifying the run-time location of each package, including:
  • On the Web, available for download by Setup.exe.
  • Embedded in Setup.exe and extracted to the target system.
  • Uncompressed and stored on the suite source media.

Installation Collaboration

Today, installation development must be integrated into agile development practices where installation responsibilities are distributed amongst the team and are an essential element of the iterative development process. The InstallShield 2012 Collaboration add-on has been significantly enhanced to better support distributed, collaborative installation development.

• A new project type called Developer Installation Manifest (DIM) which is a feature-sized collection of related items such as product files, shortcuts, registry entries, text file changes, IIS Web sites, and other elements that together make up a discrete portion of a product installation.
• A new Developer Installation Manifest Editor that can be separately installed and used by the entire product development team to create and manage their installation files. The manifest can then be dynamically or statically linked by the Installation Author to the product's Basic MSI project.
• The InstallShield Premier Edition includes 5 licenses of the Developer Installation Manifest Editor, enabling product development teams to immediately start working collaboratively.

64-Bit Enhancements

Windows 7 adoption continues and is also driving the adoption of the 64-bit operating system. InstallShield 2012 provides the most comprehensive support for 64-bit installation development.

• Updated dependency scanners to identify 64-bit dependencies of the 64-bit files in a project.
• Support for setting permissions for files, folders and registry keys in 64-bit locations.
• A prerequisite that installs the 64-bit version of the Microsoft VSTO 2010 Runtime.

Application Tagging

Software "self-instrumentation" or tagging is evolving as an industry standard, enabling software producers to create smarter applications that give customers better information for software asset management and license optimization initiatives. InstallShield 2012 is the only strategic installation development solution that creates ISO 19770-2 software identification tags as part of the installation development process.

• Automatically creates the ISO 19770-2 tag during the installation development process and ensures it is deployed as part of the application's install.
• Enhanced General Information view to manage the required metadata elements.
• Installs the tag in the locations as defined by the standard.
• Digitally sign tags in addition to your application files and setup.

Continued Innovations

• New monitoring method for COM extraction.
• Merge Module Projects now include built-in support for IIS, Text File Changes, and XML File Changes.
• Automation interface support for specifying the required execution level for Setup.exe.
• New prerequisites that install Internet Explorer 9, SQL Server 2008 R2 Native client, Windows Identify Foundation, and more.
• The ability to determine if Adobe Reader 10, Internet Explorer 9, or Microsoft Office (2010, 2007, or 2003) is installed on a target system.

Editions and Licensing Options to Fit Your Needs

• Available in three editions: Premier, Professional, and Express in both English and Japanese.
• Buy InstallShield as either a node-locked license or a concurrent license that developers can share.
• Buy extra Standalone Build licenses to better integrate installation and product build processes.