InstallShield: Features

Windows 8 and Window Server 2012 support a new package format, AppX, to install Windows Store applications, formerly known as Metro apps. Delivering Windows 8 apps through the Windows Store to large enterprise environments poses some challenges and restrictions that Software Producers can overcome by offering a sideloading installation for their enterprise applications. InstallShield 2012 Spring Premier now lets you sideload enterprise Windows 8 .appx packages through Suite projects, enabling Windows Store apps and desktop applications to be bundled and installed through a single installer outside the Windows Store.

NOTE: Sideloading is an option only available in Windows 8 Enterprise Edition, enabling enterprise IT administrators to remotely install Windows Store applications.

The cloud is transforming how application data is accessed and stored. To meet customer demand, Software Producers must support their products both on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments. SQL Azure enables Enterprises to offload database processing tasks and free up on-premises database resources—saving both money and compute capacity within the Enterprise.

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes new SQL Azure database scripting capabilities enabling Software Producers to support hybrid cloud SQL deployments. This allows configuration of both on-premises and hybrid cloud database servers.

Microsoft's release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 will be major events in 2012. Today, many Enterprises are in the midst of major operating system (OS) migrations to Windows 7 and will soon begin to explore compatibility with Windows 8. Windows 8 also has a significant focus on capabilities for the consumer. Software Producers, regardless of whether they serve the enterprise and/or the consumer market, will want to ensure their applications are both compatible with and can install and run on Windows 8 as soon as possible —demonstrating their commitment to supporting the latest technology.

InstallShield 2012 Spring allows specification that the installation requires Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, plus it lets you build feature and component conditions for these operating systems.

InstallShield is the ultimate setup solution for .NET software developers with full support for Visual Studio, including the new Visual Studio 2012. Microsoft recommends that all Visual Studio developers standardize on InstallShield.

InstallShield lets you create your installations within the same Visual Studio interface where you create your products, making .NET install authoring more efficient. All InstallShield views are presented within the Visual Studio .NET Solution Explorer in a separate window, so no scrolling is necessary and side-by-side viewing options are available.

With full .NET integration and support, InstallShield gives you everything you need to efficiently author reliable .NET software installations. You have the option of creating installations directly within the Visual Studio interface or using the intuitive InstallShield IDE. You can also link the primary outputs of your .NET projects to your installs, scan C# and .NET projects for file dependencies, configure .NET custom actions, distribute the .NET Framework or .NET Compact Framework, and much more.

InstallShield ensures your .NET installations are always current and reliable. It dynamically links your install project to other Visual Studio .NET project outputs, automatically updating your installation with your latest source files every time your product is built. Your installation projects also automatically include both Debug and Release build configurations, ensuring the proper source files will be included in your build.

Visual Studio

A new generation of "app-store savvy" users means the bar has been raised for installation run-time. Current MSI dialogs are very limited and prevent Software Producers from being able to deliver a modern experience.

An entirely new end-user interface with redesigned built-in wizard pages and a new wizard page editor provide richer user interface capabilities and full control over the user interface layout, text strings and dialog behavior to create a better run-time experience.

Update and patch deployment is a key element of modern software applications. Software Producers must continually update their applications to keep up with customer demand. Research has shown that a Software Producers ability to notify and deliver the latest updates and patches has a direct impact on support call volume and overall product satisfaction.

InstallShield 2012 Spring checks for the latest updates and patches at installer run-time. If an update is found, it will automatically be downloaded and run in place of the old installer ensuring that users always have the latest version of the application installed.

The need to bundle multiple products and packages together and deliver a unified installation experience continues to rise, resulting in widespread adoption of the InstallShield 2012 Premier Suite/Advanced UI project type. We've incorporated customer requests into the new Suite capabilities available in InstallShield 2012 Spring:

• Import and reference PRQ files as Suite packages
• Dynamic file links for Suite packages
• Advanced reporting and logging on Suite packages
• New UI for custom conditions

Anywhere, anytime access to applications is becoming pervasive in the Enterprise. To accomplish this many Enterprise customers often use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to provision applications provided by Software Producers. Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager was recently updated to support user-centric computing. Enterprises migrating to this latest version need accurate deployment metadata to populate Systems Center 2012 Configuration Manager's new App Model.

InstallShield 2012 Spring helps you provide this metadata to your Enterprise customers, reducing their burden to manage your application.

The General Information view in InstallShield 2012 Spring has new settings that let you specify whether you want to include System Center Configuration Manager application data in your installation.

PowerShell has become the standard for scripting in the Enterprise. PowerShell supports Enterprise scripting best practices and can greatly expedite developer scripting tasks. It is now included with both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 and enabled by default. Nearly all Microsoft products can be managed through PowerShell with a fraction of the time and skill set required from legacy scripting languages.

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes support for custom actions that run PowerShell scripts. This helps Software Producers streamline installation scripting requirements and support best practices of their Enterprise customers.

Update and patch deployment is a key element of modern software applications. Software Producers must continually update their applications to keep up with customer demand. Research has shown that a Software Producers ability to notify and deliver the latest updates and patches has a direct impact on support call volume and overall product satisfaction.

InstallShield 2012 Spring checks for the latest updates and patches at installer run-time. If an update is found, it will automatically be downloaded and run in place of the old installer ensuring that users always have the latest version of the application installed.

This functionality offers advantages over MSI chaining, InstallShield prerequisite support, and the user interface functionality that is provided by Windows Installer.

• 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 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
• Import and reference PRQ files as Suite packages
• Dynamic file links for Suite packages
• Advanced reporting and logging on Suite packages
• New UI for custom conditions

Achieving this level of flexibility, integration and consistency is a challenge and a strategic installation development solution capable of supporting complex requirements with minimal scripting or coding is essential.

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. If customers cannot easily track software usage they risk non-compliance, which creates substantial risk-exposure and pain that is attributed to the software producer, resulting in a negative customer experience and jeopardizing the software producer's reputation.

InstallShield enables software producers to help their customers by delivering better visibility into installed software estate in order to facilitate software compliance efforts.

The method uses a kernel driver to monitor the areas of the registry that are modified during dynamic COM extraction at build time and static COM extraction at design time. It combines the advantages that the earlier methods provided, allowing the DLL to read existing registries entries and preventing changes to the build machine.

Several existing views are available in Merge Module projects in InstallShield:

• Internet Information Services—This view enables you to create and manage new IIS Web sites, applications, virtual directories, application pools, and Web service extensions.
• Text File Changes—This view lets you configure search-and-replace behavior for content in text files—for example, .txt, .htm, .xml, .config, .ini, and .sql files—that you want to modify at run time on the target system.
• XML File Changes—This view lets you add references for nodes and node sets of XML files that you want to change at run time.

To configure the required execution level through the automation interface, use the new read-write RequiredExecutionLevel property of the ISWiRelease object. This property corresponds with the Required Execution Level setting on the Setup.exe tab for a release in the Releases view.

1. InstallShield includes several InstallShield prerequisites that you can add to Basic MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects:
   • Internet Explorer 9.0
   • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Native Client 10.50.1600.1
   • Windows Identity Foundation
   • Microsoft VSTO 2010 Runtime (x64)
   • Microsoft Office 2010 PIA
2. InstallShield has predefined system searches:
   • Adobe Reader 10
   • Internet Explorer 9
   • Microsoft Office 2010
   • Microsoft Office 2007
   • Microsoft Office 2003

InstallShield revolutionized software installations as the first to provide support for application virtualization with Microsoft^® App-V™.

When you build a traditional MSI project, InstallShield can simultaneously build it as a virtual App-V package. It can also automatically modify your legacy MSIs to App-V packages. InstallShield handles all the conversion work, so there's no learning curve for developers new to application virtualization.

To an end user, virtual applications appear and function just like physically installed software. But virtual applications never get installed on the client. Instead they run in their own isolated virtual containers – which include registry entries, libraries, executables, and anything else the application needs to run – completely separate from the operating system. Because there's no physical installation, there are no installation or retirement problems and no application compatibility issues.

More and more software companies are delivering their applications as virtual packages, including Microsoft. It provides Office 2010 as an App-V package.

Installations created for Windows Installer dramatically differ from traditional installations, which often results in completely starting over to create a new MSI installation for a legacy application. InstallShield Repackager captures the data placed on your system during installation and converts it into a Windows Installer package, which you can then customize and distribute according to your organization's needs.

InstallShield Repackager lets you eliminate the tedious steps involved in re-creating your entire installation—simply run your legacy application installation from InstallShield Repackager. Automatically repackage any setup to a fully compliant MSI package to ensure that your installations are compatible with all Windows OS, including Windows Vista.

Repackaging a legacy setup involves monitoring the execution of a non-Windows Installer setup and converting changes made by the setup into a Windows Installer file. Repackager comes with the Repackaging Wizard for accomplishing this task. Using this Wizard, you can select the repackaging method (either Snapshot or Installation Monitoring), specify the setup(s) you want to repackage, and run the setup(s). When the Repackaging Wizard has finished its analysis, a Repackager project (.irp) file is automatically created, which can then be modified or converted to an InstallShield Editor project (.ism) for further editing, or converted directly to a Windows Installer package (.msi).

In addition to the validation tests added to the Windows 7 Logo certification testing suite, InstallShield comes with the InstallShield Best Practices (ISBP) validation suite. Validators in this suite alert you if your installation violates any best-practices guidelines.

• ISBP01: Verifies that no feature is named 'ALL'.
• ISBP02: Verifies that no directory is named 'DATABASE'.
• ISBP03: Verifies that no ComboBox is shorter than 50 units.
• ISBP04: Verifies that properties used on dialogs are secure or restricted public properties.
• ISBP05: Verifies that no ControlEvent condition is NULL.
• ISBP06: Verifies that InstallUISequence custom actions are also sequenced in the InstallExecuteSequence.
• ISBP07: Verifies that all features have associated components and all components are associated with features.
• ISBP08: Verifies that ARPINSTALLLOCATION is set after CostFinalize in the InstallExecuteSequence.
• ISBP09: Verifies that LIMITUI is not set without ARPNOMODIFY.
• ISBP10: Verifies that AppSearch properties are secure or restricted public properties.
• ISBP11: Verifies that no precompiled .NET assemblies are being distributed.
• ISBP12: Verifies that no file is self-registered.
• ISBP13: Verifies that properties set by dialog controls and used in the installation have a default value.
• ISBP14: Verifies that each file has the correct version information or an MsiFileHash entry.
• ISBP15: Verifies that no RadioButtonGroup has Text defined.
• ISBP16: Verifies that each component with a 64-bit destination is marked as a 64-bit component.

Not only does improved validation testing increase the usefulness of InstallShield as a tool to prepare your applications for Windows 7 Logo certification, with ISBP, you can now avoid common installation issues.

Support customers around the world by enabling one installation to support 35 runtime languages for Windows installations.

Multilingual support lets you localize your installations, eliminating hundreds of hours of installation dialog and message box translation effort. Additional languages can be added easily. Changes and additions to existing translations are made with a three-step process: export all or part of the associated string tables, make the changes, and re-import them.

The power of multilingual support can also be combined with installation conditions in InstallShield to create installations that include different files, registry entries, and other resources for each of your supported languages. The conditions will assure that only the correct resources get installed for each language.

Supported languages

Arabic	Indonesian	Russian
Chinese (Simplified)	Japanese	Thai
Chinese (Traditional)	Korean	Turkish
English	French (Canada)	Portuguese (Brazil)
Basque	French (France)	Portuguese (Portugal)
Bulgarian	German	Romanian
Catalan	Greek	Serbian
Croatian	Hebrew	Slovak
Czech	Hungarian	Slovenian
Danish	Italian	Spanish
Dutch	Norwegian	Swedish
Finnish	Polish

InstallShield takes a three-pronged approach to fully supporting modern multi-language installations:

Windows Installer and InstallScript installations can be built in a Unicode format, InstallShield projects are stored in a Unicode format, and the InstallShield interface supports entering and viewing Unicode characters from multiple character sets at the same time.

InstallShield provides a Standalone Build module that enables you to maintain a clean build system by using the part of InstallShield that builds the installations, plus any redistributables that you want to include in your installations. This clean build system gives you more control over the quality of the installations that you build.

The Standalone Build module can coexist with other versions of InstallShield, and you can run it from the command line.

You can buy extra InstallShield Standalone Build licenses without paying for a full license of InstallShield. Plus each license of InstallShield 2012 Spring Premier Edition includes five free Standalone Build licenses, while the Professional Edition includes one free license.  

A repository is a collection of common elements can be shared and reused in different installation projects for quickly rolling out new setups. Examples of elements that can be stored in a repository include end-user dialogs, InstallScript™ files, merge modules, SQL scripts, system searches, and project templates. Repositories provide you with the ability to reuse project elements in multiple projects to ensure consistency. They also save you from having to duplicate work. For example, if many of the installations for your organization's products include a particular custom dialog, you can create that custom dialog once and then publish it to your repository. Any time you want to use that dialog in another installation, simply add the dialog from your repository to your project. Two types of repositories are available: 

• Local repository - A local repository is your own collection of installation elements that you want to be able to reuse in multiple projects. A local repository is stored on your local machine, and it is not available to other installation authors.
• Network repository - A network repository is a collection of installation elements that multiple installation authors can access and reuse in their projects as needed. A network repository fosters collaboration among installation authors; it is stored on a network.

 

Virtual machines have been a licensing and compliance challenge for software vendors. If you don't want your products to run on virtual machines, InstallShield has the answer.

It can build installations that detect when they are being run on virtual machines like Microsoft Hyper-V and Virtual PC or VMware and optionally block the installation.

For applications that run in locked-down environments, InstallShield has functionality that significantly improved the way installations set files, folders, and registry keys at run time.

Developers frustrated with the traditional Windows Installer LockPermissions option will appreciate the improvements, none of which are supported by the old option, including:

• Support for many well-known security identifiers (SIDs) such as guest, everyone, and administrator
• Support for localized user names, which could cause the installation to fail in the traditional option
• Denying a user or group from having the permissions you are specifying
• Adding permissions to a file, folder, or registry key that already exists on the target system, without deleting any existing permissions for that object
• Indicating whether you want permissions to be applied to all of a folder's subfolders and files
• Configuring permissions for a new user that is being created during the installation

Easily add managed-code custom actions to your MSIs, InstallScript MSIs, merge modules, and Web projects using the Custom Action Wizard. Managed-code custom actions allows for calls to be made to a public method in a .NET assembly that is written in managed code such as Visual Basic .NET or C#.

InstallShield lets you give your MSIs the ability to install multiple instances of the same product on the same machine. It gives you even more flexibility when creating installations.

At build time, InstallShield creates a product code–changing instance transform for each instance and streams the instance transforms into the .msi package. At run time, the setup launcher displays a new instance selection dialog that lets end users specify whether they want to install a new instance, or update or maintain an already installed instance.

InstallShield lets you add Windows Installer packages to Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects as chained MSI packages.

If your Basic MSI or InstallScript MSI installation includes chained MSI packages and Windows Installer 4.5 or later is present on the target system, the Windows Installer installs the multiple packages as a single transaction.

If one or more of the packages in the transaction cannot be installed successfully or if the end user cancels the installation, the Windows Installer initiates rollback for all packages to restore the system to its earlier state.

InstallShield lets you associate InstallShield prerequisites with features to chain multiple MSIs together in a single installation.

It ensures that when your end users install a feature, the prerequisite is also installed (if it wasn't already on their machine). Feature prerequisites are useful for applications or components that are used by only some configurations of the installed product and are not used during the installation itself.

InstallShield also still supports setup prerequisites not associated with any features. Setup prerequisites are installed before the main installation begins. They are useful for base applications and technology frameworks that must be installed for all configurations of the installed product or that provide functionality that is used during the installation itself.

Automation interface improvements in InstallShield give you more automation flexibility, lowering the number of times manual intervention through the IDE is required. Enhancements include automating functionality that was previously only available via the IDE.

 

The OverrideSystemAttributes, OverrideSystemSize, OverrideSystemVersion, and OverrideSystemLanguage properties are now available for the ISWiFile object in the automation interface; they replace the UseSystemSettings property, which is obsolete. In addition, the DeleteSubFolder and DeleteShortcut methods are available for the ISWiFolder object. Other improvements include:

• OverrideSystemAttributes—To override the development system's settings for all of the file attributes, such as Hidden, ReadOnly, Vital, and System, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Hidden, ReadOnly, Vital, and System properties are ignored. 
• OverrideSystemSize—To override the development system's file size, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Size property is ignored. 
• OverrideSystemVersion—To override the development system's file version, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Version property is ignored. 
• OverrideSystemLanguage—To override the development system's file language, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Languages property is ignored. DeleteSubFolder—Deletes the specified subfolder from the current folder.
• DeleteShortcut—Deletes the specified shortcut from the current folder.

 

A setup prerequisite is a base application or component that must be installed on the target machine before your application can be installed.

The Setup Prerequisite Editor in InstallShield is a tool that enables you to create custom setup prerequisites that you can include in your projects. You can also use it to modify the settings for any of the prerequisites that are included with InstallShield.

Previous enhancements to the Setup Prerequisite Editor in InstallShield let you flexibly and easily redistribute setup prerequisites:

• Improved user interface give you menus that list easy-to-access commands.
• The Behavior tab lets you specify whether end users may skip the prerequisite installation. You can also specify how the prerequisite installation should proceed if it appears that the target machine does or does not need to be restarted. 
• Create prerequisite installation conditions for DWORD registry comparisons. You can also create conditions for 64-bit machines.
• Specify different methods for supplying each individual setup prerequisite in your installation. This enables you to store some of the setup prerequisite files on the source media; compress some of the setup prerequisite files into Setup.exe, to be extracted at run time; and download some of the setup prerequisite files.
• Assign release flags to setup prerequisites; include and exclude any combinations of setup prerequisites when you build different releases. 

With unit testing in InstallShield, you can test just the XML file changes without having to build and run your entire installation.

The XML File Changes view supports namespaces in XML files. With quick and easy XML testing, you can increase the reliability of XML configurations.

InstallShield brings you deeper XML support—letting you create more flexible installations by specifying the XML encoding of an XML file.

 

With InstallShield,  you can require that end users scroll through the complete End-User License Agreement (EULA) before installation can proceed.

InstallShield includes support for disabling the Next button on the LicenseAgreement dialog until the end user reaches the end of the EULA text in the scrollable EULA control through mouse or keyboard scrolling. The end user must also select the "I accept the terms in the license agreement" option before the Next button is enabled; this behavior is the same as with earlier releases of InstallShield.

The scroll requirement is not available in the LicenseAgreement dialog by default. To use this functionality, you must add to your project the Windows Installer DLL custom action called WatchScroll. This custom action calls the EulaScrollWatcher.dll file. In addition, you must modify the Next button's Control conditions and add an event to the Memo control. This is available for Basic MSI projects.

Instead of writing COM information to the registry on a target system, you can write COM information to an application manifest file, which is an XML file that contains information about an application and the libraries it depends on. Use the Reg-Free COM Wizard in InstallShield to create and modify registry-free manifest files to include in your installations.

A local repository is your own collection of installation elements that you want to be able to reuse in multiple projects. A local repository is stored on your local machine, and it is not available to other installation authors. Examples of elements that can be stored in a repository include end-user dialogs, InstallScript™ files, merge modules, SQL scripts, system searches, and project templates.
 
Repositories provide you with the ability to reuse project elements in multiple projects to ensure consistency. They also save you from having to duplicate work. For example, if many of the installations for your organization's products include a particular custom dialog, you can create that custom dialog once and then publish it to your repository. Any time you want to use that dialog in another installation, simply add the dialog from your repository to your project.

 

InstallShield provides functionality to select an existing Windows user account or create a new one at installation time.

• Select an existing Windows user account at installation time. Many server applications require the specification of a named user account to enable a server application to access resources restricted to other users. This restricted resource access is a fundamental construct in creating secure applications.
• Create a new Windows user account at installation time. System Administrators may decide to create a user account explicitly for an application. This limits the resource access for a given user account to only those resources required to run the application.

Developers can prevent their end users from installing outdated versions of applications. InstallShield lets you set an expiration date and message for setup launchers so that if an end users tries to run the setup executable on or after the expiration date, the expiration message is displayed and the installation exits.

InstallShield is the most advanced solution ever built for creating script-based installations. InstallShield is the ultimate tool for leveraging the powerful and easy-to-use InstallScript language. With over 445 predefined installation-related functions, InstallScript enables script-based customization of any part of the installation, including the user dialog sequence, file transfer, error handling, reboot, and even uninstallation. InstallShield's scripting functionality ensures you meet your every installation requirement.
 
InstallShield offers you maximum power and flexibility by enabling any level of install customization. Source code control integration makes InstallScript project versioning possible, while the automation interface dramatically increases the number of ways in which projects can be updated programmatically. InstallShield's simplified patch and upgrade creation, clean build system support, and build report tools also assist in your product lifecycle management.
 
Complementing InstallShield's vast functionality and tool selection is its remarkable ease of use. You can use the Project Assistant to walk you through any script-based installation-authoring process, saving you significant development time. InstallShield can also add the latest source files at build time via linked folders, automatically find required file dependencies, and intelligently add third-party technology dependencies using over 70 technology modules. InstallShield does it all!

Plus, InstallShield enables you to add InstallShield prerequisites to your InstallScript projects. InstallShield prerequisites are redistributables that usually install a product or technology framework required by your application.

 

Edit MSI packages without having to convert them to an ISM project and save the changes made into a transform (MST) file.

Opening Existing Transforms for Editing
Browse for an existing MST file. Before InstallShield can open the MST file, it needs the base MSI to which this file should be applied. Also, it requires the names of any additional MSTs that should be applied to the base MSI before opening the MST for editing.

The first time you open an MST file, the MST Wizard launches. This wizard allows you to specify the MST file (completed by default), the base MSI file, and any additional transforms to apply before editing. When the wizard is finished, the transforms are applied and the MST opens in the IDE in Direct MST mode. The data specified in the wizard is saved so the next time the file is opened, the MST opens directly in the IDE.

Creating New Transform Projects
You can use the transform project type to create a new MST for editing. As with opening an existing transform, when you create a new transform project, the MST Wizard launches.

The MSI debugging tools ensure your installations always function as expected. InstallShield lets you step through both the Windows Installer user interface sequence and execute sequence to confirm conditional behavior or to identify and eliminate trouble spots in your install. Break points can be set and variables can be monitored. When custom actions are encountered, the appropriate debugging tool can be launched.

You can also validate your packages for internal consistency and compliance with Microsoft guidelines, and test run an install without transferring files. In addition, build reports can be generated to review installation project contents.

The source code control (SCC) integration gives you the power to manage and edit your installation projects the same way you manage your other code. Installations authored using  InstallShield can be easily checked in and out of source code control no matter which SCC solution you use, ensuring greater consistency between your applications and installations. InstallShield is capable of interacting with any source code control system that complies with the Microsoft SCC Interface, including Microsoft Visual SourceSafe®, Rational ClearCase®, Merant PVCS®, and more. Save projects in XML format, making them far easier to manage and manipulate. XML project files integrate more efficiently with source code control than a binary file and enable additional command-line processes to be built around installation authoring.

XML project files integrate more efficiently with source code control tools than a binary file and enable additional command-line processes to be built around installation authoring.

InstallShield makes it easy for software developers to create reliable, high-quality software patches and upgrades that can modify all aspects of a previously deployed package.
 
Everything you need to efficiently build Windows Installer (MSI) or InstallScript™ patches and updates. With InstallShield, you can easily author patches and updates that seamlessly modify any aspect of your previously installed applications. From a simple hot fix to a major upgrade, software updates built with InstallShield guarantee your customers always have the latest versions of your products. And InstallShield has rigorous automated quality-control tools that ensure installing your patches and updates never damages your customers' systems - or trust in you.
 
InstallScript patch and update creation made easy. Just use InstallShield's Release Wizard to create differential media that contains only the changed files from the original InstallScript installation to your new, updated one. Then distribute the differential media as part of an update install that includes an "update-aware" script. The script gives you the option to customize your customer's update experience with update-specific dialogs.
 
Advanced MSI patch and upgrade capabilities. InstallShield's MSI QuickPatch™ tool lets you quickly create reliable patches by simply pointing to your existing MSI installation and identifying whatever changes you wish to make - InstallShield captures the changes for you automatically. Managing QuickPatch technology is a breeze with the history view. It allows you to quickly analyze previous QuickPatches made to a particular project. InstallShield also has full patch design and upgrade views for you to author even the most complex, customized software updates. Validation for all patches and updates occurs automatically to ensure they always function properly and follow Microsoft guidelines.
 
Get patches and updates to your customers more easily. Whether you wish to distribute your InstallScript and MSI upgrades via the Internet,
CD-ROM, FlexNet Connect, or any other method, InstallShield makes it happen.

Sometimes one installation doesn't fit with every end user. Whether you're a developer creating installations for use by various departments on a corporate network or if you just have a wide range of end users, you probably need to develop your installation to meet multiple sets of requirements.

The Release Wizard is your key to quickly building your distribution media. You can create different CDs with different components if that's your preferred distribution method. Or you can build a single project that contains as many different flavors of your installation as is necessary for your varied end users.

You can generate project outlines that can be used over and over again, enhancing project efficiency.
 
A project template (.ist file) contains all of the default settings and design elements that you want to use as a starting point when you create an installation project or merge module project.
 
You can open a template in InstallShield and edit it as you would a project. To create a template, save any project as an .ist file.
 
InstallShield project templates serve only as a starting point for new projects. After you have created a project based on a template, there is no link between the current project and the existing template. If you change an element in the template, it does not affect the project that you created based on that template. However, you can modify the template and create another project based on the updated version of the template.

This helps to ensure your products are installed properly in a variety of scenarios.

This view and its subviews do not appear in the following project types:

• InstallScript
• InstallScript Object
• QuickPatch
• Smart Device

InstallShield provides the Windows Installer capability in the System Search view to locate a particular file, folder, registry key, .ini file value, or .xml file value on a target system prior to installation. Essentially, this feature lets you perform application, version, and configuration data searches.

The System Search view displays a grid listing each search that you want to conduct on the target system. You can use this view to add a predefined system search—whether it is a search that is included with InstallShield or one that is stored in a repository—to your project. You can also use the System Search view to customize any predefined searches or define your own system searches for your installation.

Whenever you define your own search, the System Search Wizard is launched. From there, you can select from a list of search options and specify search details, such as the number of subfolder levels to search. When you modify an existing search, you can alter your initial selections in the System Search Wizard.

Media spanning functionality enables you to build an installation that spans more than one CD, DVD, or other media, so you never have to impose limits on the size of your application.
 
For example, if the installation's payload is too large to fit onto one CD or DVD, the installation is automatically built onto multiple pieces of that media.

InstallShield comes with full support for digital signatures, letting you save time by digitally signing all your files at build time.  This includes signing with certificates stored in .pfx files (in addition to InstallShield's pre-existing ability to sign with certificates stored in .spc+.pvk file pairs).

InstallShield has settings in the Releases view that let you modify the icon and version resource properties for setup and update executable to match your company and product branding.

Ability to specify icons is available in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only.

Each time you build an installation, a log and build report are generated. The log contains the same information displayed in the Output window during the build process. The build report contains a concise summary of your build, as well as a listing of all features and files included in your build. Since both the log and report are generated and time-stamped each time you build the installation, you can use these for manual verification of the contents of installations, as well as for your records.

InstallShield supports the Microsoft Build engine (MSBuild) included with the .NET Framework.  MSBuild support allows you to build Visual Studio solutions with InstallShield projects in build lab environments where Visual Studio is not installed. MSBuild is an extensible build framework designed to remove the build dependence on Visual Studio.

Easily check for and install any prerequisite applications or system components before your installation is executed.

Choose from our preconfigured setup prerequisites, like Internet Explorer and Java Runtime Environment. You can even choose to deploy your setup prerequisites with your product or download them from the Web as needed. In addition, you can design your own prerequisites from the ground up using the powerful Setup Prerequisite Editor that is included in the Premier and Professional editions of InstallShield.

InstallShield enables you to add InstallShield prerequisites to your InstallScript projects. InstallShield prerequisites are redistributables that usually install a product or technology framework required by your application.

If you work on a mix of different project types, InstallShield lets you simplify your testing matrix by enabling you to reuse this type of redistributable in all of your Basic MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects.

A new Prerequisites tab on the Options dialog lets you specify the folders where InstallShield should search for InstallShield prerequisite files (.prq files), their associated data files, and their dependencies. It makes it easier for your development team to share prerequisites and store them in source code control.

Distributing your applications via the Internet a snap with One-Click Install technology. You can offer your customers a seamless, familiar download and installation experience with a single mouse click.
 
Automatically create a Web page that contains your complete installation package for users to easily download. With One-Click Install technology, unnecessary user steps, such as responding to the cumbersome "save as" dialog and finding the location of the application on their system before installing it, are eliminated. Using this process, success rates for installations increase significantly, which means fewer support calls for you and increased customer trust in your products.
 
You can customize your One-Click Install installation to only install files not already present on the user's PC—including the Windows Installer or InstallScript™ engines—saving your customers valuable bandwidth. A default location, hosted by InstallShield, can be used for retrieval of the engines, or you can set and maintain your own. Optionally, you can also allow users to choose to save your installation to run later.
 
Special build options include digitally signing and password-protecting your installations. Additionally, LZX compression capability can be optionally used to create the smallest installation possible. This is ideal for a final build before Web distribution.

Access this dialog from the Script Text field in the properties grid of VB/JScript custom actions. In the dialog, enter the script code your custom action should execute.

Seamlessly add the setup information from a COM+ application to an installation package with absolutely no script writing using the Component Services view.

The Component Services view enables you to manage COM+ applications and components for your installation package. You can manage both COM+ server applications and application proxies. A COM+ application proxy consists of a subset of the attributes of the server application, and it enables remote access from a client machine to the machine where the application resides.

File dependency scanners are time-savers for your setup. They automatically determine the required files for your projects. For example, the Visual Basic 6 Scanner collects dependencies of a standard Visual Basic project. The Static Scanner scans portable executables (DLL, EXE, OCX, etc.) and finds out which files they need to run successfully. And the Dynamic Scanner identifies files called by an application while it is running.

You can view the results of the scanning processes in a displayed list and select which files you would like to add to your project. These lists will be pre-filtered to exclude system level files that could negatively impact the target system. A user defined filtering list is also available if changes to the filtering process are desired.

From time to time, you may need to do a little more to customize an installation to meet your individual needs. The Custom Actions view makes it easy for you to schedule a custom action, such as an EXE or VBScript file, to run at precisely the right moment in your installation.
Custom actions allow you to add functionality to your installation that is not inherently supported. These actions can be used for any task, such as displaying a Readme file or deleting a registry entry.

You can create custom actions that will launch an executable (.exe), call a function in a DLL, or execute a VBScript. These custom actions can be inserted in numerous locations within the installation process.

You can further tailor your installation process by choosing to run custom actions only when a required feature, operating system file, folder, registry entry, or INI file entry exists on an end-user's machine. Predefined conditions can be selected or the System Search Wizard can be used to create unique ones for your needs.

This option allows you to quickly rebuild only part of an installation, without retrieving and compressing all the files again. This accelerates testing of changes to the user interface, such as the dialogs included or specific dialog graphics, or to project properties.

MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects created with InstallShield can display billboards to your end users during the installation process.

Billboards are an ideal way to educate end users in new features and advertise other related products. Each billboard is a file that you or your company's graphics department creates for complete control over the look and feel of the file transfer. InstallShield supports the use of Adobe Flash application file (.swf), .bmp, .gif, .jpg, and more as billboards.

InstallShield includes support for HTML controls on dialogs. HTML controls enable you to use HTML markup for dialog controls.

You can include on dialogs links to Web pages, installed HTML files, and HTML support files. If an end user clicks the hyperlink on the runtime dialog, you can have the HTML page open in an Internet browser, or you can trigger other behavior that you have defined through your InstallScript code or MSI.

The HTML control lets you use any valid HTML markup, including styles to control their appearance.

Windows 8 and Window Server 2012 support a new package format, AppX, to install Windows Store applications, formerly known as Metro apps. Delivering Windows 8 apps through the Windows Store to large enterprise environments poses some challenges and restrictions that Software Producers can overcome by offering a sideloading installation for their enterprise applications. InstallShield 2012 Spring Premier now lets you sideload enterprise Windows 8 .appx packages through Suite projects, enabling Windows Store apps and desktop applications to be bundled and installed through a single installer outside the Windows Store.

NOTE: Sideloading is an option only available in Windows 8 Enterprise Edition, enabling enterprise IT administrators to remotely install Windows Store applications.

The cloud is transforming how application data is accessed and stored. To meet customer demand, Software Producers must support their products both on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments. SQL Azure enables Enterprises to offload database processing tasks and free up on-premises database resources—saving both money and compute capacity within the Enterprise.

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes new SQL Azure database scripting capabilities enabling Software Producers to support hybrid cloud SQL deployments. This allows configuration of both on-premises and hybrid cloud database servers.

Microsoft's release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 will be major events in 2012. Today, many Enterprises are in the midst of major operating system (OS) migrations to Windows 7 and will soon begin to explore compatibility with Windows 8. Windows 8 also has a significant focus on capabilities for the consumer. Software Producers, regardless of whether they serve the enterprise and/or the consumer market, will want to ensure their applications are both compatible with and can install and run on Windows 8 as soon as possible —demonstrating their commitment to supporting the latest technology.

InstallShield 2012 Spring allows specification that the installation requires Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, plus it lets you build feature and component conditions for these operating systems.

InstallShield is the ultimate setup solution for .NET software developers with full support for Visual Studio, including the new Visual Studio 2012. Microsoft recommends that all Visual Studio developers standardize on InstallShield.

InstallShield lets you create your installations within the same Visual Studio interface where you create your products, making .NET install authoring more efficient. All InstallShield views are presented within the Visual Studio .NET Solution Explorer in a separate window, so no scrolling is necessary and side-by-side viewing options are available.

With full .NET integration and support, InstallShield gives you everything you need to efficiently author reliable .NET software installations. You have the option of creating installations directly within the Visual Studio interface or using the intuitive InstallShield IDE. You can also link the primary outputs of your .NET projects to your installs, scan C# and .NET projects for file dependencies, configure .NET custom actions, distribute the .NET Framework or .NET Compact Framework, and much more.

InstallShield ensures your .NET installations are always current and reliable. It dynamically links your install project to other Visual Studio .NET project outputs, automatically updating your installation with your latest source files every time your product is built. Your installation projects also automatically include both Debug and Release build configurations, ensuring the proper source files will be included in your build.

Visual Studio

Anywhere, anytime access to applications is becoming pervasive in the Enterprise. To accomplish this many Enterprise customers often use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to provision applications provided by Software Producers. Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager was recently updated to support user-centric computing. Enterprises migrating to this latest version need accurate deployment metadata to populate Systems Center 2012 Configuration Manager's new App Model.

InstallShield 2012 Spring helps you provide this metadata to your Enterprise customers, reducing their burden to manage your application.

The General Information view in InstallShield 2012 Spring has new settings that let you specify whether you want to include System Center Configuration Manager application data in your installation.

PowerShell has become the standard for scripting in the Enterprise. PowerShell supports Enterprise scripting best practices and can greatly expedite developer scripting tasks. It is now included with both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 and enabled by default. Nearly all Microsoft products can be managed through PowerShell with a fraction of the time and skill set required from legacy scripting languages.

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes support for custom actions that run PowerShell scripts. This helps Software Producers streamline installation scripting requirements and support best practices of their Enterprise customers.

Windows 7 adoption continues and is also driving the adoption of the 64-bit operating system. Gartner predicts that by 2014, 75% of corporate PCs will be running 64-bit version of Windows. Comprehensive support for 64-bit installation development is now mandatory and InstallShield includes the following capabilities:

• The dependency scanners in InstallShield now include support for identifying 64-bit dependencies of the 64-bit files in a project. If you use InstallShield on a 64-bit version of Windows and you use the built-in methods for detecting dependencies, InstallShield can scan for 64-bit dependencies of the 64-bit .NET assemblies in your project.
• Support for settitg 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. You can add this prerequisite to Basic MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects.

Software producers can fully leverage the advances offered by 64-bit operating systems.

InstallShield has the tools developers need to support Windows 7. It makes it easy to create applications that meet Microsoft's requirements for the "Compatible with Windows 7" logo. InstallShield also has all the tools you need to build installations for 64-bit applications (available in the Premier and Professional Editions only).

InstallShield makes it easy to install applications on Windows Server 2008 R2. You can now specify that your installation requires Windows Server 2008 R2 and build conditions for features and components.

More software development teams are adopting "software production engineering" as a best practice to automate their build and release processes. To help, Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a tool that enables Visual Studio developers to manage source code integration and automatic software builds. TFS includes a build server which can be used by developers to do a complete Visual Studio solution build of the most recent bits contained in source control.

InstallShield includes support for Team Foundation Server, so you can use the familiar Visual Studio IDE to effectively manage your Visual Studio and InstallShield projects in a single environment. You can do continuous product and installation builds with minimum effort.

You can use Team Foundation Build to compile and build InstallShield projects along with Visual Studio solutions. Using Team Explorer you can also configure, schedule, and queue builds for InstallShield projects together with Visual Studio solution builds.

Restarting the system after an installation is inconvenient for end users. One of the Windows 7 Logo Program requirements is that all installations must contain an option that enables end users to automatically close applications and attempt to restart them after the installation is complete.

To support this quality guideline, an MsiRMFilesInUse dialog is available in all Basic MSI projects. The installation displays this dialog if one or more files that need to be updated are currently in use during the installation. The dialog contains two options to allow end users to specify how to proceed:

• End users can choose to have the installation close the applications that are using those files and then attempt to restart the applications after the installation is complete.
• End users can avoid closing the applications. A reboot will be required at the end of the installation.

In addition, InstallShield integrates capabilities for more elegant application shutdown when required by an installation—minimizing reboots and simplifying and improving the overall installation experience.

The SdRMFilesInUse function in InstallShield displays a dialog that includes a list box containing a list of the applications that are open and are locking files. The dialog also includes two radio buttons that allow end users to specify whether the installation should attempt to use the Restart Manager to shut down the applications that are locking files or overwrite the locked files (which most likely results in the need for a reboot to complete the installation).

For InstallScript MSI projects, the OnRMFilesInUse event handler displays the SdRMFilesInUse dialog. This event handler is called when the Restart Manager is enabled and Windows Installer sends an INSTALLMESSAGE_RMFILESINUSE message to the installation.

This new version, which includes the latest binary files from Microsoft, is available for any Basic MSI, InstallScript, or InstallScript MSI projects that you create in InstallShield.
 
Support for DIFx 2.1 enables you to:

 

• Fully test drivers more easily before shipping final (signed) versions.
• Remove binary files associated with a driver during uninstallations.
• Target any 64-bit machines.
• Hide the Plug and Play Connect Device to Computer dialog.
• Remove the Add/Remove Programs entry for a device.
• Remove the Reinstall the Device Drive Package if it is Already Installed dialog.
• Add the 64-bit Itanium device drive check box
• Add Use Multilingual Runtime dialogs

The Device Driver advanced setting's Common tab within the Components view enables you to specify whether the current component includes a device driver and, if so, select desired runtime installation options. The Sequence tab enables you to specify the order in which the project's device drivers (not just the current component's device drivers) should be installed.

The ClickOnce Assistant guides you through the project creation process, providing pertinent information along the way.

InstallShield introduces the CoCreateObjectDotNet function, which calls functions in .NET assemblies without the assembly being registered for COM interoperability. Each object created with this function is associated with a single class in a single .NET assembly.

InstallShield makes it easier than ever for developers to maintain a single installation project to support both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Comprehensive functionality in InstallShield gives you more power to deploy applications on 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Server operating systems:

• Support for 64-bit managed custom code actions: InstallShield determines the target architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) of the main .NET assembly associated with a customer action and ensures that the appropriate version of the .NET Framework (32-bit or 64-bit) is used to run the managed code at run time.
• SQL dialog support: If you add SQL support to an installation project, InstallShield dialogs list 64-bit local and network SQL Server instances.
• Ability to override path variables: If you have a separate release for 32-bit and 64-bit target systems, InstallShield saves you time and effort by overriding path variables to ensure that 32-bit items get included with the 32-bit release and 64-bit items get included with the 64-bit release (image below).
• 64-bit MSI repackaging: InstallShield Repackager supports repackaging 64-bit applications to create MSI installations.
• 64-bit App-V support: InstallShield can create 64-bit Microsoft App-V virtual packages to deploy virtual applications on 64-bit Windows systems.

In addition to Windows Installer (MSI) installations, InstallScript installations can also install and register 64-bit files. Interaction with 64-bit system folders and the 64-bit registry are fully supported as well. This functionality is supported for both Intel and AMD 64-bit platforms.

• Detect whether the setup is running on a 64-bit system, and whether it is Intel or AMD.
• Install files to 64-bit Program Files and Common Files locations.
• Limited support for installing files to 64-bit Windows System Folder.
• All general registry functions support accessing 64-bit specific registry locations.
• Mark components to installed or not installed on 64-bit Intel or 64-bit AMD platforms.
• Install and register 64-bit self-registering files.

InstallShield supports 64-bit COM extraction. If you are using InstallShield on a 64-bit system, it can extract COM data from a 64-bit COM server.

In order to install the data to the correct locations, the component must be marked as 64 bit.

The validation suite in InstallShield lets you easily test your installations for Windows 7 compatibility, so you can ensure that your applications are optimized for Microsoft's latest Windows operating system.

In addition, getting your application "Certified for Windows 7" lets end users know that your product takes full advantage of Windows 7 capabilities. InstallShield lets you pre-test your installations against the extensive "Certified for Windows 7" program guidelines before you apply for certification - saving you time and money.

InstallShield's validation suite automatically scans your Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects for:

• Compliance with all internal consistency evaluators (ICEs)
• Digital signature of executables and DLLs
• Exclusion of Windows Protected Files
• Approved installation target directory
• ...and many more validation checks

If Windows 7 compatibility issues are identified, InstallShield reports the specific issue and offers additional information to help you troubleshoot and get your installation ready for Windows 7 certification in no time.

InstallShield supports all 32- and 64-bit versions of .NET 2.0, in both Basic MSI and InstallScript. Easily check your configuration for any of the listed versions of the .NET Framework and download if necessary. Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects support 64-bit versions of .NET 4.0, 3.5, 3.0, and 2.0 as setup prerequisites. The list includes:

• .NET Framework 2.0 (x64)
• .NET Framework 2.0 (x64) Language Packs
• .NET Framework 2.0 (IA64)
• .NET Framework 2.0 (IA64) Language Packs
• .NET Framework 3.0 (x64)
• .NET Framework 3.5
• .NET Framework 4.0

InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions offer support for both 32- and 64-bit .NET versions, while the InstallShield Express Edition does not support the 64-bit versions.

Whether your installations are MSI-based, InstallScript-based, or any other project type, InstallShield has the tools you need to author professional installations optimized for Windows 7.

Windows 7-related features in InstallShield:

• Certified for Windows 7 Validation Suite - The validation suite uses pre-configured validation testing, letting you test your MSI installations for compliance with Microsoft's Windows 7 Logo requirements. The suite uses over 20 validators to automatically scan your basic MSI and InstallScript MSI.
• Support for UAC - InstallShield includes robust support for the User Account Control (UAC) functionality that Microsoft added for Windows 7, letting you eliminate unnecessary UAC prompts that spoil end users' installation experience.
• Support for Restart Manager - InstallShield integrates capabilities for more elegant application shutdown when required by an installation - minimizing reboots and simplifying and improving the overall installation experience.
• Ability to Specifically Target Windows 7 - With the Project Assistant (MSI) and Platform Dialog (InstallScript) you can specifically target your installations for Windows 7. This allows for Windows 7-specific customization, while maintaining compatibility with existing operating systems.
• Automatic MSI Log File Creation - Windows Installer supports automatic log-file creation. You can enable this option to create a log the first time you run the installation, instead of having to uninstall and re-install with the logging command line switch. If your setup fails, there is an added option to view the log file at the end of the installation.
• Better Support for Windows 7 in InstallScript Projects - Required Execution Level setting supported in InstallScript. 
• Enhancements to Setup Prerequisites - Enhancements to the Setup Prerequisite Editor in InstallShield let you flexibly and easily redistribute setup prerequisites - giving you more direct control over your installations. The Setup Prerequisite editor also lets you test for Windows 7.
• Improved Digital Signing Capabilities - Easily specify files in your project (static and dynamic) to have the InstallShield build engine digitally sign.
• Support for Elevation-free Patching - Patches, of setups that have been installed with elevated privileges, can be run without the end user seeing the elevation prompt.
• UAC Setup Prerequisites Support - You can define a prerequisite as requiring administrative privileges - allowing you to run prerequisites with elevated privileges and then dropping down to user privileges to run the MSI user interface.
• Support to Display UAC Shield Icon - Ready to Install dialog will display "UAC shield" icon on the "Install" button in new projects. Users can add Shield icon to any MSI button via the dialog editor.  Shield Icon will show up in the dialog editor (when run under Windows 7).
• Additional Windows 7 Support for InstallScript Projects - End users can run InstallScript One-Click Install installations on Windows 7 systems, even if they have limited privileges; if elevated privileges are required because of the required execution level specified in the installation's manifest, the appropriate UAC prompt is displayed when the Setup.exe file is launched. 

InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions contain Windows 7 items listed above. InstallShield Express Edition does not contain validation or InstallScript and, therefore, does not contain Windows 7 Validation or InstallScript-related Windows 7 support. InstallShield Express Edition also does not have a Setup Prerequisite Editor.

Installing an MSI-based setup on Windows 7 can be tricky, with the User Account Control (UAC) functionality that Microsoft added for Windows Vista. Attempting to run as a standard user in a UAC-enabled Windows 7 environment can be a serious challenge. Of note, one has to deal with a number of UAC prompts that seek to verify credentials for a valid administrator account before launching a task that requires a full administrator access.

Although the purpose of these prompts is to ensure that no malicious application can silently install when the end user is attempting to install your application, these prompts can spoil the overall user experience. InstallShield lets you create installations that handle UAC authorization requests in a user-friendly manner, requesting elevated privileges required for all installations just once, and using those privileges throughout the installation.

Use the Require Administrative Privileges setting in the General Information view to specify at a project-wide basis whether administrative privileges are required for an installation. Also, use the Required Execution Level setting in the Releases view to specify the minimum level required by your installation's Setup.exe file for running the installation (the setup launcher, any setup prerequisites, and the .msi file) on Windows platforms.

In addition, numerous previous enhancements to Windows 7-related features in InstallShield provide an even better UAC experience. The UAC shield logo added on the "Install" button on ReadyToInstall dialog in Basic MSI projects indicates that that the installation may require elevated privileges.

InstallShield improved SQL support and support for Web-based technologies such as IIS 7 and SSL—used in SaaS deployments—make it easier for you to deploy Windows-based Web applications.

SQL support is available in the Premier and Professional Editions, but not in the Express Edition.

In addition, you can create only one Web site per installation in InstallShield Express Edition. InstallShield Premier Edition and InstallShield Professional Edition support the creation of more than one Web site per installation.

InstallShield enables you to run SQL scripts on SQL Server SP1 (available in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only), and includes support for SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP1 for mobile device installations.

Please Note: If you are getting ready for Windows 7, the following support details will help you stay compliant:

While preparing a Windows Installer installation for a multilingual application, you can use InstallShield to create shortcuts that include support for the Windows multilingual user interface (MUI). Four settings are available in the Shortcuts view for a selected shortcut:

• Display Resource DLL
• Display Resource ID
• Description Resource DLL
• Description Resource ID

However, if you need to localize your installations, eliminating hundreds of hours of installation dialog and message box translation effort, you will need InstallShield's Multilingual Support feature available ONLY in the Premier Edition

InstallShield supports the option to either install or include a requirement to install the .NET Framework 4.0 and the .NET Compact Framework 4.0 in Windows Installer installations—past versions of .NET are also still supported.

Several redistributables are available for mobile device installations: .NET Compact Framework 4.0, SQL Mobile 2005, SQL Client 2.0, and SQL Mobile 2005 Replication. In addition, installations for the latest smartphone support redistributables.

InstallShield ensures your .NET installations are always current and reliable. It dynamically links your install project to other Visual Studio project outputs, automatically updating your installation with your latest source files every time your product is built. Your installation projects also automatically include both Debug and Release build configurations, ensuring the proper source files will be included in your build.

InstallShield has unparalleled Windows Installer support, giving you complete control over your MSI installations.

Use InstallShield's powerful wizards, task-based views, and a full Direct Table Editor to easily enable your installs to leverage Windows Installer service benefits (such as install-on-demand, auto-repair, and installation rollback). With InstallShield you can easily create or edit an MSI file directly using rich views and create or edit a transform based on an existing MSI file. Plus InstallShield gives you enhanced control and error management capabilities with a MSI debugger, MSI differencing tools, and instant access to InstallShield Error Central.

InstallShield offers you maximum power and flexibility by enabling any level of install customization. Source code control integration makes MSI project versioning possible, while the automation interface dramatically increases the number of ways in which projects can be updated programmatically. InstallShield's simplified patch and upgrade creation, clean build system support, debugging, and build report tools also assist in your product lifecycle management.

What is MSI?

The Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) service is a native service of Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Server 2008, and more. It is also available as an add-on service for Windows NT 4, Windows 98, and Windows 95. The Windows Installer service enables the operating system to track installed applications and manage components that are shared by various applications.

• Automatically repair key product files that have been corrupted
• Advertise applications without initially loading software on a system
• Install/uninstall applications with component-level management
• Roll back to a computer's original state during an interrupted installation

Windows Installer can be described as a combination of two major components:

1. A set of guidelines and APIs for software developers, and
2. The services designed to process commands put forth by the APIs; these services include a Client Install

It is also an Install Service that can run with elevated administration privileges.

You will find live runtime support for over 200 third-party redistributables making collecting all the right files and registry entries a snap.

Just select the redistributables you need via check boxes or drag and drop the objects you want and they will be included in your installation project, along with all their dependencies.

This simplifies the process of packaging redistributables and ensuring consistency for internal or external use. These redistributables have been carefully built by the technology creators or by InstallShield, eliminating a great deal of redundant effort.

The Redistributables view will tell you where to get these objects and merge modules, and allow for direct downloads. You can quickly and easily drop them into your installation, assigning them to one or more features of your application. Just visit the Redistributables view and check the items you would like to include.

Some of the pre-packaged third-party technology modules include:

Access 2003 / 2002 / 2000 / 97	Jet 4.0 / 3.51
ADO	FoxPro (various)
ATL	MDAC 2.7 / 2.6 / 2.5
BDE 5.1	MSDE 2000 / 1.0
C/C++ Runtime	MSXML 6.0 SP1
Crystal Reports 8.5 SP1/ 8.5 / 8	OLE 2.4
DAO 3.6 / 3.5	Visual Basic Runtime
DCOM 95	and many more.
DirectX 9 / 8

 

Simply put, InstallShield gives developers the IDE they've been asking for. From new toolbars and views to customizable grids to dynamic search tools, this is by far the best user interface InstallShield has ever offered, saving developers a ton of time.

Some of the highlights include:

• Direct Editor view: When you select a table in this view, a new toolbar is displayed for adding, finding, and editing data in the table. (InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only)
• Property Manager view: This view contains a new toolbar that has buttons for performing tasks such as adding and deleting properties. You can also drag and drop column headings onto a new group box area to organize the rows in the view in a hierarchical format. (InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only)
• Redistributables view: The new toolbar and the new group box area in this view provide robust search and organizational functionality.
• Internet Information Services view: This view has been redesigned to look similar to IIS 7, making it much easier to use.
• General Information view: All of the settings in this view are displayed in one grid, instead of as separate grids associated with nodes. The settings are grouped into several categories to make them easier to find.
• Path Variables view: This view contains a new toolbar that has buttons for performing tasks such as adding and deleting path variables. It also has support for dynamic searches and a new group box area for organizing rows in a hierarchical format. (InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only)

This view contains a spreadsheet-like table that shows the collection of language-independent identifiers and corresponding language-specific values for your project.

Get complete and centralized control over the localizable text strings that are displayed at run time during the installation process. Some highlights include a toolbar for adding and editing string entries and a group box area for sorting string entries by categories such as language and by modified date.

This view lets you configure search-and-replace behavior for content in text files (such as .txt, .htm, .xml, .config, .ini, and .sql files) that you want to modify at run time on the target system.

The text files can be part of your installation, or they can be files that are already present on target systems.

A new generation of "app-store savvy" users means the bar has been raised for installation run-time. Current MSI dialogs are very limited and prevent Software Producers from being able to deliver a modern experience.

An entirely new end-user interface with redesigned built-in wizard pages and a new wizard page editor provide richer user interface capabilities and full control over the user interface layout, text strings and dialog behavior to create a better run-time experience.

Enable a prospective customer to use the latest version of your product-with all of its features fully available-on a trial basis. No dongle is used to limit or lock software access. After a predetermined trial period, the trialware securely expires, and it no longer runs on the prospect's machine.

With the Trialware view, you can configure a product version key for your product to protect it from piracy. Using InstallShield to protect your product lets you:

• Invest minimal time and expense to turn your product into trialware.
• Set firm expiration dates using sophisticated, flexible security technology that blocks unauthorized extensions of trialware.
• Specify hyperlinks that should be displayed in the trialware run-time dialogs, which are launched whenever end users launch a protected application. The hyperlinks direct users to Web pages that inform them, for example, how to purchase your product.

With the Trialware view, you can configure a product version key for trialware. InstallShield uses the product version key to wrap a secure shell around your product's executable file (.exe). The .exe file can be unwrapped and used only according to the product version key settings that you configure, such as the number of days in the trial period.

InstallShield makes it even easier to create installations with four MSI tools. They save you time and effort by providing a rich UI for common troubleshooting tasks.

• InstallShield MSI Diff lets you easily compare two MSI, MSM, PCP, or MSP database files or two InstallShield project files. A color-coded display clearly shows what changes have been made to the files.
• InstallShield MSI Query helps you ensure the accuracy of SQL statements by testing them before they run in the build script. It saves you time by displaying a direct, visual representation of the success of your code.
• InstallShield MSI Sleuth eliminates hours of tedious research by letting you run a database query to identify MSI packages against third-party installers. It makes it easy to detect legacy setups so that they can be replaced with industry-standard MSI packages.
• InstallShield MSI Grep can run searches of MSI and MSM files to locate specific elements within the database. It saves you time by eliminating the manual scrutinizing of database lines to locate data.

The MSI Log Analyzer is a powerful utility that enables you to generate easy-to-use reports from Windows Installer log files to help you troubleshoot run-time issues. You can access this feature from the Tools menu.

Easily create installations for both hardware and software device drivers in a matter of minutes. Simply load the wizard, point to the file, and the rest is automatic with absolutely no code writing necessary.
 
The Device Driver Wizard simplifies the process of installing device drivers from a Windows Installer installation using the Driver Installation Frameworks for Applications (DIFxApp) from Microsoft. The wizard creates the necessary table and entries, custom actions, feature, and components.
 
For the latest available information on the Driver Installation Frameworks, visit Windows Hardware and Driver Central at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/.

Identify differences between two existing MSI packages for training or troubleshooting using the automated MSI differencing tool. The differences between two projects are highlighted in the Direct Editor, with options to accept or reject the changes.

Use the Visual Dialog Editor to easily modify existing installation dialogs (dozens are included) or create completely new dialogs, tailoring the user interface experience for your customers.

A Dialog Creation Wizard allows you to select a dialog template and insert the dialog at any location in the user interface sequence. The new dialog will be automatically linked to the previous and following dialogs.

Dialogs can be exported and imported for sharing across projects, making project collaboration more efficient.

With the click of a button, you can change themes for your project and allow for easy previews of each dialog from within the Dialogs view.

 

InstallShield Premier Edition contains all themes, while InstallShield Professional Edition contains a limited set of themes and InstallShield Express Edition an even more basic set.

You can use the intuitive Project Assistant to seamlessly guide you through the installation-authoring process. The Project Assistant offers a simplified look at the project data, and allows you to switch to more detailed views and back again while maintaining all updates.

The Project Assistant reduces the time required for new users or setup authors unfamiliar with either Windows Installer or smart device install formats to complete an installation project quickly. It also enables veteran setup authors to save time by more efficiently jumpstarting a new installation project.

The advanced user interface makes installation creation more efficient by outlining the major steps involved in the creation of an installation, providing you separate views for common tasks within each of these steps, and enabling drag-and-drop support for files, registry entries, and other project elements.

More than 20 task-based wizards simplify your development tasks, from starting Visual Basic projects to building custom releases.

To explore your setup options in more detail, the Installation Designer uses a series of task-based views to organize your work. Quickly edit project elements using check boxes and drag-and-drop support. Express marks the steps you've finished as "complete" to help you keep track of what you've done and what's left to do.

Instant error assistance speeds testing time and increases efficiency by eliminating searches for error message explanations. The error message output window contains a direct link to Error Central, which has the latest details and solutions to resolve the error. This is supported in both the Express IDE and in the Visual Studio .NET design environment.

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.

This makes installations painless, fast and virtually transparent and meets the needs of a new generation of "app-store savvy" users.

Several enhancements have been made to the SQL Scripts view for Windows Installer-based and InstallScript-based projects.

1. This view has a Batch Separator setting on the Advanced tab for a SQL connection. It enables you to specify a preferred batch separator for the connection.
2. When multiple files are selected and then added in this view, they are now inserted by alphanumeric order and according to the file extension. Previously in this scenario, the selected SQL script files were randomly added to the project.
3. The All Files (*.*) type has been added to the list of file types to be displayed in the SQL Files Selection dialog box so that you can browse for any types of files. Previously, only .sql files could be selected.

Only InstallShield comes with complete support for Oracle, enabling you to easily connect to Oracle database servers and run SQL Scripts as part of your installation. This will enable you to:

• Configure any SQL script, regardless of the target database server, from a single view in the integrated design environment
• Create setups with SQL scripts that can be installed to any database server, regardless of the vendor
• Create SQL Scripts that will run only on a specific vendor's database server
• Run SQL scripts as part of your installation
• Create and maintain SQL Scripts for all database technologies in a single view

Configure all aspects of the MySQL database server - run MySQL scripts as part of your installation - and add, delete, or edit existing version requirements associated with the MySQL database server.

This functionality enables you to target different types of SQL databases and specific versioning associated with these databases. Before InstallShield, you could only do this for SQL Server databases.

Modify XML files on any target system as part of the installation or uninstallation process, enabling you to more easily deploy to server platforms. Built-in beans—the XML File Transformer and Archived XML Transformer—enable you to apply XSL transforms to XML files, even if they reside within a ZIP file.

Sometimes you need to modify .xml files that store settings related to your product as well as standard configuration files like web.config and machine.config. Flexera Software recommends adding the files to a component and then modifying the file in the XML File Changes view. If you have a file with the majority of your settings in it, and you only need to tweak some of the settings at install time, then you should only add or import the necessary changes in the XML File Changes view. This way you would not have to update your installation every time you decided to make minor changes to the .xml file.

The InstallShield interface allows you to edit any .xml file on the target machine from the XML File Changes view. This view is supported in the InstallShield interface for .msi, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects. It is also available when you open .msi packages in Direct Edit Mode. Additionally, the XML File Changes view supports XPath expressions which are executed at run time. The run time for the XPath support actually uses XPath queries. Therefore, if a target element exists more than once in an .xml file, then all of the elements will be updated. The main thing to note is that you can enter XPath syntax directly in the XML File Changes view.

XML file support extends into other areas of InstallShield product functionality. The System Search capability allows you to search for an .xml file by attribute value, contents, or existence of the element you specify.

Easily create a new installation project to deploy a Web service, or add a Web service to an existing project. Use the dedicated Internet Information Services (IIS) view to configure all aspects of IIS, including creating new Web sites and configuring virtual roots.

InstallShield is the ultimate solution for Web service deployment. When Microsoft introduced Visual Studio .NET, it made available powerful tools and new languages for developers to create customized Web services. InstallShield pioneered the way Web services are installed, and InstallShield continues that tradition with the most powerful and flexible tools available for deploying your Web services.

Using InstallShield, developers can easily create a new installation project to deploy a Web service, or add a Web service to an existing install. This can be done in the intuitive, easy-to-use interface or directly within the same Visual Studio .NET IDE you use to develop your application. And InstallShield's complete Windows installation-authoring support means you can add Web services to your installation regardless of whether you create Windows Installer (MSI) or InstallScript installations.

Internet Information Services (IIS) is a Web server developed by Microsoft. It provides a secure platform for building and deploying Web-based applications, managing Web sites, and publishing information to the Internet or an intranet.

InstallShield has IIS-related functionality that makes it very easy to create and manage new IIS Web sites, Web applications, virtual directories, application pools, and Web service extensions.

InstallShield previously enhanced its Internet Information Services view to look similar to IIS 7. The settings are displayed in grids, instead of on tabs. And the grids have buttons that let you sort the grid settings by category or alphabetically. (Available in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only).

InstallShield gives developers the ability to add IIS Web applications to IIS Web sites and configure as needed. Plus, you can create an IIS virtual directory without an application. Both enhancements were popular requests by the InstallShield community.

InstallShield has an IIS Scanner that analyzes and records IIS data about a Web site's settings – including its virtual directories, applications, and application pools – and imports it into the Internet Information Services view. So instead of having to waste time manually entering data, InstallShield finds it and adds it for you. Developers can then use that view to make any changes to the IIS settings. (Available in InstallShield Premier Edition only).

In addition, InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions have IIS settings that our users specifically requested, including:

• Managed Pipeline Mode: Specify the appropriate request-processing pipeline mode—either integrated or classic—for an application pool.
• Enable 32-Bit Applications: Specify whether you want to allow 32-bit applications in the selected application pool to be run on 64-bit systems.
• .NET Framework Version: Specify the version of the .NET Framework that an application pool should load.
• ASP.NET Platform: For installations that may run on a 64-bit version of Windows with the .NET Framework, specify which ASP.NET platform should be used to map a Web site, application, or virtual directory to the ASP.NET version.

InstallShield lets you take full advantage of current Microsoft technology by supporting the latest Windows Mobile platforms (including Windows Embedded CE 6.x). You can now easily create installations for mobile devices and expand your deployment to Palm handheld devices and all Window CE platforms—including PocketPC and Smartphone.

The Basic MSI, InstallScript MSI, and Smart Device project types in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions offer this support. In addition, the Express and Smart Device project types in InstallShield Express Edition offer this support.

A simplified view allows you to effortlessly create installations for all Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices with just a few mouse clicks.

This allows product developers and technical writers to more efficiently create and manage their portion of the installation. The Collaboration add-on includes:

• A 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 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 – significantly streamlining and integrating the collaboration that is needed between product development and installation development – especially for decentralized, distributed teams.
• The InstallShield Premier Edition includes 5 licenses of the Developer Installation Manifest Editor, enabling product development teams to immediately start working collaboratively

This allows installation development to be integrated into agile development processes.

InstallShield Premier Edition customers are entitled to 5 licenses of the Standalone Build. InstallShield  Professional customers are entitled to 1 license. Additional Standalone Build licenses can be purchased.

This helps you implement continuous integration of installation and product builds.

InstallShield is once again revolutionizing software installations with support for application virtualization with Microsoft® App-V™.

When you build a traditional MSI project, InstallShield can simultaneously build it as a virtual App-V package. It can also automatically modify your legacy MSIs to App-V packages. InstallShield handles all the conversion work, so there's no learning curve for developers new to application virtualization.

To an end user, virtual applications appear and function just like physically installed software. But virtual applications never get installed on the client. Instead they run in their own isolated virtual containers – which include registry entries, libraries, executables, and anything else the application needs to run – completely separate from the operating system. Because there's no physical installation, there are no installation or retirement problems and no application compatibility issues.

More and more software companies are delivering their applications as virtual packages, including Microsoft. It provides Office 2010 as an App-V package.

Windows 8 and Window Server 2012 support a new package format, AppX, to install Windows Store applications, formerly known as Metro apps. Delivering Windows 8 apps through the Windows Store to large enterprise environments poses some challenges and restrictions that Software Producers can overcome by offering a sideloading installation for their enterprise applications. InstallShield 2012 Spring Premier now lets you sideload enterprise Windows 8 .appx packages through Suite projects, enabling Windows Store apps and desktop applications to be bundled and installed through a single installer outside the Windows Store.

NOTE: Sideloading is an option only available in Windows 8 Enterprise Edition, enabling enterprise IT administrators to remotely install Windows Store applications.

The cloud is transforming how application data is accessed and stored. To meet customer demand, Software Producers must support their products both on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments. SQL Azure enables Enterprises to offload database processing tasks and free up on-premises database resources—saving both money and compute capacity within the Enterprise.

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes new SQL Azure database scripting capabilities enabling Software Producers to support hybrid cloud SQL deployments. This allows configuration of both on-premises and hybrid cloud database servers.

Microsoft's release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 will be major events in 2012. Today, many Enterprises are in the midst of major operating system (OS) migrations to Windows 7 and will soon begin to explore compatibility with Windows 8. Windows 8 also has a significant focus on capabilities for the consumer. Software Producers, regardless of whether they serve the enterprise and/or the consumer market, will want to ensure their applications are both compatible with and can install and run on Windows 8 as soon as possible —demonstrating their commitment to supporting the latest technology.

InstallShield 2012 Spring allows specification that the installation requires Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, plus it lets you build feature and component conditions for these operating systems.

InstallShield is the ultimate setup solution for .NET software developers with full support for Visual Studio, including the new Visual Studio 2012. Microsoft recommends that all Visual Studio developers standardize on InstallShield.

InstallShield lets you create your installations within the same Visual Studio interface where you create your products, making .NET install authoring more efficient. All InstallShield views are presented within the Visual Studio .NET Solution Explorer in a separate window, so no scrolling is necessary and side-by-side viewing options are available.

With full .NET integration and support, InstallShield gives you everything you need to efficiently author reliable .NET software installations. You have the option of creating installations directly within the Visual Studio interface or using the intuitive InstallShield IDE. You can also link the primary outputs of your .NET projects to your installs, scan C# and .NET projects for file dependencies, configure .NET custom actions, distribute the .NET Framework or .NET Compact Framework, and much more.

InstallShield ensures your .NET installations are always current and reliable. It dynamically links your install project to other Visual Studio .NET project outputs, automatically updating your installation with your latest source files every time your product is built. Your installation projects also automatically include both Debug and Release build configurations, ensuring the proper source files will be included in your build.

Visual Studio

A new generation of "app-store savvy" users means the bar has been raised for installation run-time. Current MSI dialogs are very limited and prevent Software Producers from being able to deliver a modern experience.

An entirely new end-user interface with redesigned built-in wizard pages and a new wizard page editor provide richer user interface capabilities and full control over the user interface layout, text strings and dialog behavior to create a better run-time experience.

Update and patch deployment is a key element of modern software applications. Software Producers must continually update their applications to keep up with customer demand. Research has shown that a Software Producers ability to notify and deliver the latest updates and patches has a direct impact on support call volume and overall product satisfaction.

InstallShield 2012 Spring checks for the latest updates and patches at installer run-time. If an update is found, it will automatically be downloaded and run in place of the old installer ensuring that users always have the latest version of the application installed.

The need to bundle multiple products and packages together and deliver a unified installation experience continues to rise, resulting in widespread adoption of the InstallShield 2012 Premier Suite/Advanced UI project type. We've incorporated customer requests into the new Suite capabilities available in InstallShield 2012 Spring:

• Import and reference PRQ files as Suite packages
• Dynamic file links for Suite packages
• Advanced reporting and logging on Suite packages
• New UI for custom conditions

Anywhere, anytime access to applications is becoming pervasive in the Enterprise. To accomplish this many Enterprise customers often use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to provision applications provided by Software Producers. Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager was recently updated to support user-centric computing. Enterprises migrating to this latest version need accurate deployment metadata to populate Systems Center 2012 Configuration Manager's new App Model.

InstallShield 2012 Spring helps you provide this metadata to your Enterprise customers, reducing their burden to manage your application.

The General Information view in InstallShield 2012 Spring has new settings that let you specify whether you want to include System Center Configuration Manager application data in your installation.

PowerShell has become the standard for scripting in the Enterprise. PowerShell supports Enterprise scripting best practices and can greatly expedite developer scripting tasks. It is now included with both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 and enabled by default. Nearly all Microsoft products can be managed through PowerShell with a fraction of the time and skill set required from legacy scripting languages.

InstallShield 2012 Spring includes support for custom actions that run PowerShell scripts. This helps Software Producers streamline installation scripting requirements and support best practices of their Enterprise customers.

This new functionality offers advantages over MSI chaining, InstallShield prerequisite support, and the user interface functionality that is provided by Windows Installer.

• 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 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.

Achieving this level of flexibility, integration and consistency is a challenge and a strategic installation development solution capable of supporting complex requirements with minimal scripting or coding is essential.

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.

This makes installations painless, fast and virtually transparent and meets the needs of a new generation of "app-store savvy" users.

This allows product developers and technical writers to more efficiently create and manage their portion of the installation. The Collaboration add-on includes:

• A 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 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 – significantly streamlining and integrating the collaboration that is needed between product development and installation development – especially for decentralized, distributed teams.
• The InstallShield Premier Edition includes 5 licenses of the Developer Installation Manifest Editor, enabling product development teams to immediately start working collaboratively

This allows installation development to be integrated into agile development processes.

Windows 7 adoption continues and is also driving the adoption of the 64-bit operating system. Gartner predicts that by 2014, 75% of corporate PCs will be running 64-bit version of Windows. Comprehensive support for 64-bit installation development is now mandatory and InstallShield includes the following capabilities:

• The dependency scanners in InstallShield now include support for identifying 64-bit dependencies of the 64-bit files in a project. If you use InstallShield on a 64-bit version of Windows and you use the built-in methods for detecting dependencies, InstallShield can scan for 64-bit dependencies of the 64-bit .NET assemblies in your project.
• Support for settitg 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. You can add this prerequisite to Basic MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects.

Software producers can fully leverage the advances offered by 64-bit operating systems.

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. If customers cannot easily track software usage they risk non-compliance, which creates substantial risk-exposure and pain that is attributed to the software producer, resulting in a negative customer experience and jeopardizing the software producer's reputation.

InstallShield enables software producers to help their customers by delivering better visibility into installed software estate in order to facilitate software compliance efforts.

The method uses a kernel driver to monitor the areas of the registry that are modified during dynamic COM extraction at build time and static COM extraction at design time. It combines the advantages that the earlier methods provided, allowing the DLL to read existing registries entries and preventing changes to the build machine.

Several existing views are available in Merge Module projects in InstallShield:

• Internet Information Services—This view enables you to create and manage new IIS Web sites, applications, virtual directories, application pools, and Web service extensions.
• Text File Changes—This view lets you configure search-and-replace behavior for content in text files—for example, .txt, .htm, .xml, .config, .ini, and .sql files—that you want to modify at run time on the target system.
• XML File Changes—This view lets you add references for nodes and node sets of XML files that you want to change at run time.

To configure the required execution level through the automation interface, use the new read-write RequiredExecutionLevel property of the ISWiRelease object. This property corresponds with the Required Execution Level setting on the Setup.exe tab for a release in the Releases view.

1. InstallShield includes several InstallShield prerequisites that you can add to Basic MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects:
   • Internet Explorer 9.0
   • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Native Client 10.50.1600.1
   • Windows Identity Foundation
   • Microsoft VSTO 2010 Runtime (x64)
   • Microsoft Office 2010 PIA
2. InstallShield has predefined system searches:
   • Adobe Reader 10
   • Internet Explorer 9
   • Microsoft Office 2010
   • Microsoft Office 2007
   • Microsoft Office 2003

InstallShield Premier Edition customers are entitled to 5 licenses of the Standalone Build. InstallShield  Professional customers are entitled to 1 license. Additional Standalone Build licenses can be purchased.

This helps you implement continuous integration of installation and product builds.

InstallShield has new prerequisites associated with.NET Framework 4.0 and other technologies, including:

• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 Full
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 Client
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client 10.00.2531
• Microsoft SQL CE 3.5 SP2
• Microsoft ReportViewer 2010
• Microsoft VSTO 2010 Runtime
• FSharp Redistributable Package 2.0
• Microsoft Office 2007 PIA

You can save time by including these prerequisites in your installation projects to check for and install required applications and system components during install time.

More software development teams are adopting "software production engineering" as a best practice to automate their build and release processes. To help, Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a tool that enables Visual Studio developers to manage source code integration and automatic software builds. TFS includes a build server which can be used by developers to do a complete Visual Studio solution build of the most recent bits contained in source control.

InstallShield includes support for Team Foundation Server, so you can use the familiar Visual Studio IDE to effectively manage your Visual Studio and InstallShield projects in a single environment. You can do continuous product and installation builds with minimum effort.

You can use Team Foundation Build to compile and build InstallShield projects along with Visual Studio solutions. Using Team Explorer you can also configure, schedule, and queue builds for InstallShield projects together with Visual Studio solution builds.

InstallShield makes it easier than ever for developers to maintain a single installation project to support both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Comprehensive functionality in InstallShield gives you more power to deploy applications on 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Server operating systems:

• Support for 64-bit managed custom code actions: InstallShield determines the target architecture (32-bit or 64-bit) of the main .NET assembly associated with a customer action and ensures that the appropriate version of the .NET Framework (32-bit or 64-bit) is used to run the managed code at run time.
• SQL dialog support: If you add SQL support to an installation project, InstallShield dialogs list 64-bit local and network SQL Server instances.
• Ability to override path variables: If you have a separate release for 32-bit and 64-bit target systems, InstallShield saves you time and effort by overriding path variables to ensure that 32-bit items get included with the 32-bit release and 64-bit items get included with the 64-bit release (image below).
• 64-bit MSI repackaging: InstallShield Repackager supports repackaging 64-bit applications to create MSI installations.
• 64-bit App-V support: InstallShield can create 64-bit Microsoft App-V virtual packages to deploy virtual applications on 64-bit Windows systems.

InstallScript is a simple but powerful programming language that was designed to do one thing: create installations. InstallShield can now build InstallScript installations that support Unicode and properly handle multiple languages in runtime strings, registry entries, dialog boxes, and more:

• Launch the InstallScript installer from within Unicode paths and correctly display characters in the user interface, regardless of whether the target system is running the appropriate code page for the language
• Create InstallScript installation packages and InstallScript custom actions that support Unicode in run-time strings, files, paths, registry entries, and other installation data
• Mix different languages on InstallScript dialogs regardless of current language of the target system

InstallShield has settings in the Releases view that let you modify the icon and version resource properties for setup and update executable to match your company and product branding.

Ability to specify icons is available in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only.

A new Prerequisites tab on the Options dialog lets you specify the folders where InstallShield should search for InstallShield prerequisite files (.prq files), their associated data files, and their dependencies. It makes it easier for your development team to share prerequisites and store them in source code control.

Developers can prevent their end users from installing outdated versions of applications. InstallShield lets you set an expiration date and message for setup launchers so that if an end users tries to run the setup executable on or after the expiration date, the expiration message is displayed and the installation exits.

You can now buy extra InstallShield Standalone Build licenses without paying for a full license of InstallShield. Plus each license of InstallShield Premier Edition now includes five Standalone Build licenses, while the Professional Edition includes one license.

The Standalone Build module enables you to keep a clean build machine by installing only the part of InstallShield that builds the installations. It plays a vital role in software builds by helping you implement continuous integration of installation and product builds.

InstallShield revolutionized software installations as the first to provide support for application virtualization with Microsoft^® App-V™.

When you build a traditional MSI project, InstallShield can simultaneously build it as a virtual App-V package. It can also automatically modify your legacy MSIs to App-V packages. InstallShield handles all the conversion work, so there's no learning curve for developers new to application virtualization.

To an end user, virtual applications appear and function just like physically installed software. But virtual applications never get installed on the client. Instead they run in their own isolated virtual containers – which include registry entries, libraries, executables, and anything else the application needs to run – completely separate from the operating system. Because there's no physical installation, there are no installation or retirement problems and no application compatibility issues.

More and more software companies are delivering their applications as virtual packages, including Microsoft. It provides Office 2010 as an App-V package.

InstallShield has the tools developers need to support Windows 7. It makes it easy to create applications that meet Microsoft's requirements for the "Compatible with Windows 7" logo. InstallShield also has all the tools you need to build installations for 64-bit applications (available in the Premier and Professional Editions only).

InstallShield makes it easy to install applications on Windows Server 2008 R2. You can now specify that your installation requires Windows Server 2008 R2 and build conditions for features and components.

InstallShield enables you to run SQL scripts on SQL Server SP1 (available in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only), and includes support for SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP1 for mobile device installations.

Simply put, InstallShield gives developers the IDE they've been asking for. From new toolbars and views to customizable grids to dynamic search tools, this is by far the best user interface InstallShield has ever offered, saving developers a ton of time.

Some of the highlights include:

• Direct Editor view: When you select a table in this view, a new toolbar is displayed for adding, finding, and editing data in the table. (InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only)
• Property Manager view: This view contains a new toolbar that has buttons for performing tasks such as adding and deleting properties. You can also drag and drop column headings onto a new group box area to organize the rows in the view in a hierarchical format. (InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only)
• Redistributables view: The new toolbar and the new group box area in this view provide robust search and organizational functionality.
• Internet Information Services view: This view has been redesigned to look similar to IIS 7, making it much easier to use.
• General Information view: All of the settings in this view are displayed in one grid, instead of as separate grids associated with nodes. The settings are grouped into several categories to make them easier to find.
• Path Variables view: This view contains a new toolbar that has buttons for performing tasks such as adding and deleting path variables. It also has support for dynamic searches and a new group box area for organizing rows in a hierarchical format. (InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only)

This view contains a spreadsheet-like table that shows the collection of language-independent identifiers and corresponding language-specific values for your project.

Get complete and centralized control over the localizable text strings that are displayed at run time during the installation process. Some highlights include a toolbar for adding and editing string entries and a group box area for sorting string entries by categories such as language and by modified date.

This view lets you configure search-and-replace behavior for content in text files (such as .txt, .htm, .xml, .config, .ini, and .sql files) that you want to modify at run time on the target system.

The text files can be part of your installation, or they can be files that are already present on target systems.

Internet Information Services (IIS) is a Web server developed by Microsoft. It provides a secure platform for building and deploying Web-based applications, managing Web sites, and publishing information to the Internet or an intranet.

InstallShield has IIS-related functionality that makes it very easy to create and manage new IIS Web sites, Web applications, virtual directories, application pools, and Web service extensions.

InstallShield previously enhanced its Internet Information Services view to look similar to IIS 7. The settings are displayed in grids, instead of on tabs. And the grids have buttons that let you sort the grid settings by category or alphabetically. (Available in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions only).

InstallShield gives developers the ability to add IIS Web applications to IIS Web sites and configure as needed. Plus, you can create an IIS virtual directory without an application. Both enhancements were popular requests by the InstallShield community.

InstallShield has an IIS Scanner that analyzes and records IIS data about a Web site's settings – including its virtual directories, applications, and application pools – and imports it into the Internet Information Services view. So instead of having to waste time manually entering data, InstallShield finds it and adds it for you. Developers can then use that view to make any changes to the IIS settings. (Available in InstallShield Premier Edition only).

In addition, InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions have IIS settings that our users specifically requested, including:

• Managed Pipeline Mode: Specify the appropriate request-processing pipeline mode—either integrated or classic—for an application pool.
• Enable 32-Bit Applications: Specify whether you want to allow 32-bit applications in the selected application pool to be run on 64-bit systems.
• .NET Framework Version: Specify the version of the .NET Framework that an application pool should load.
• ASP.NET Platform: For installations that may run on a 64-bit version of Windows with the .NET Framework, specify which ASP.NET platform should be used to map a Web site, application, or virtual directory to the ASP.NET version.

InstallShield enables you to add InstallShield prerequisites to your InstallScript projects. InstallShield prerequisites are redistributables that usually install a product or technology framework required by your application.

If you work on a mix of different project types, InstallShield lets you simplify your testing matrix by enabling you to reuse this type of redistributable in all of your Basic MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects.

Virtual machines have been a licensing and compliance challenge for software vendors. If you don't want your products to run on virtual machines, InstallShield has the answer.

It can build installations that detect when they are being run on virtual machines like Microsoft Hyper-V and Virtual PC or VMware and optionally block the installation.

For applications that run in locked-down environments, InstallShield has functionality that significantly improved the way installations set files, folders, and registry keys at run time.

Developers frustrated with the traditional Windows Installer LockPermissions option will appreciate the improvements, none of which are supported by the old option, including:

• Support for many well-known security identifiers (SIDs) such as guest, everyone, and administrator
• Support for localized user names, which could cause the installation to fail in the traditional option
• Denying a user or group from having the permissions you are specifying
• Adding permissions to a file, folder, or registry key that already exists on the target system, without deleting any existing permissions for that object
• Indicating whether you want permissions to be applied to all of a folder's subfolders and files
• Configuring permissions for a new user that is being created during the installation

InstallShield takes a three-pronged approach to fully supporting modern multi-language installations:

Windows Installer and InstallScript installations can be built in a Unicode format, InstallShield projects are stored in a Unicode format, and the InstallShield interface supports entering and viewing Unicode characters from multiple character sets at the same time.

InstallShield supports 64-bit COM extraction. If you are using InstallShield on a 64-bit system, it can extract COM data from a 64-bit COM server.

In order to install the data to the correct locations, the component must be marked as 64 bit.

MSI, InstallScript, and InstallScript MSI projects created with InstallShield can display billboards to your end users during the installation process.

Billboards are an ideal way to educate end users in new features and advertise other related products. Each billboard is a file that you or your company's graphics department creates for complete control over the look and feel of the file transfer. InstallShield supports the use of Adobe Flash application file (.swf), .bmp, .gif, .jpg, and more as billboards.

InstallShield includes support for HTML controls on dialogs. HTML controls enable you to use HTML markup for dialog controls.

You can include on dialogs links to Web pages, installed HTML files, and HTML support files. If an end user clicks the hyperlink on the runtime dialog, you can have the HTML page open in an Internet browser, or you can trigger other behavior that you have defined through your InstallScript code or MSI.

The HTML control lets you use any valid HTML markup, including styles to control their appearance.

InstallShield lets you associate InstallShield prerequisites with features to chain multiple MSIs together in a single installation.

It ensures that when your end users install a feature, the prerequisite is also installed (if it wasn't already on their machine). Feature prerequisites are useful for applications or components that are used by only some configurations of the installed product and are not used during the installation itself.

InstallShield also still supports setup prerequisites not associated with any features. Setup prerequisites are installed before the main installation begins. They are useful for base applications and technology frameworks that must be installed for all configurations of the installed product or that provide functionality that is used during the installation itself.

InstallShield lets you add Windows Installer packages to Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects as chained MSI packages.

If your Basic MSI or InstallScript MSI installation includes chained MSI packages and Windows Installer 4.5 or later is present on the target system, the Windows Installer installs the multiple packages as a single transaction.

If one or more of the packages in the transaction cannot be installed successfully or if the end user cancels the installation, the Windows Installer initiates rollback for all packages to restore the system to its earlier state.

InstallShield includes several new billboard-related features that give you more flexibility and control over the look and feel of the file transfer portion of your installation.

It gives you the ability to promote additional information to end users during the installation process in a professional manner. For example, you can now add an Adobe^® Flash^® application file (.swf) as a billboard in your project. Flash application files can consist of videos, movies, sounds, interactive interfaces, games, text, and more—anything that is supported by the .swf type of file.

Note: Billboards are currently only available in the InstallShield Express Edition.

InstallShield is the ultimate setup solution for .NET software developers with full support for Visual Studio.

InstallShield lets you create your installations within the same Visual Studio interface where you create your products, making .NET install authoring more efficient. All InstallShield's views are presented within the Visual Studio .NET Solution Explorer in a separate window, so no scrolling is necessary and side-by-side viewing options are available.

With full .NET integration and support, InstallShield gives you everything you need to efficiently author reliable .NET software installations. You have the option of creating installations directly within the Visual Studio interface or using the intuitive InstallShield IDE. You can also link the primary outputs of your .NET projects to your installs, scan C# and .NET projects for file dependencies, configure .NET custom actions, distribute the .NET Framework or .NET Compact Framework, and much more.

InstallShield ensures your .NET installations are always current and reliable. It dynamically links your install project to other Visual Studio .NET project outputs, automatically updating your installation with your latest source files every time your product is built. Your installation projects also automatically include both Debug and Release build configurations, ensuring the proper source files will be included in your build.

InstallShield supports the option to either install or include a requirement to install the .NET Framework 4.0 and the .NET Compact Framework 4.0 in Windows Installer installations—past versions of .NET are also still supported.

Several redistributables are available for mobile device installations: .NET Compact Framework 4.0, SQL Mobile 2005, SQL Client 2.0, and SQL Mobile 2005 Replication. In addition, installations for the latest smartphone support redistributables.

InstallShield ensures your .NET installations are always current and reliable. It dynamically links your install project to other Visual Studio project outputs, automatically updating your installation with your latest source files every time your product is built. Your installation projects also automatically include both Debug and Release build configurations, ensuring the proper source files will be included in your build.

Easily add managed-code custom actions to your MSIs, InstallScript MSIs, merge modules, and Web projects using the Custom Action Wizard. Managed-code custom actions allows for calls to be made to a public method in a .NET assembly that is written in managed code such as Visual Basic .NET or C#.

InstallShield lets you give your MSIs the ability to install multiple instances of the same product on the same machine. It gives you even more flexibility when creating installations.

At build time, InstallShield creates a product code–changing instance transform for each instance and streams the instance transforms into the .msi package. At run time, the setup launcher displays a new instance selection dialog that lets end users specify whether they want to install a new instance, or update or maintain an already installed instance.

Expand the global reach of your products by presenting installation text and buttons in Hebrew and Arabic, which are read from right to left.

InstallShield makes it even easier to create installations with four MSI tools. They save you time and effort by providing a rich UI for common troubleshooting tasks.

• InstallShield MSI Diff lets you easily compare two MSI, MSM, PCP, or MSP database files or two InstallShield project files. A color-coded display clearly shows what changes have been made to the files.
• InstallShield MSI Query helps you ensure the accuracy of SQL statements by testing them before they run in the build script. It saves you time by displaying a direct, visual representation of the success of your code.
• InstallShield MSI Sleuth eliminates hours of tedious research by letting you run a database query to identify MSI packages against third-party installers. It makes it easy to detect legacy setups so that they can be replaced with industry-standard MSI packages.
• InstallShield MSI Grep can run searches of MSI and MSM files to locate specific elements within the database. It saves you time by eliminating the manual scrutinizing of database lines to locate data.

In addition to the validation tests added to the Windows 7 Logo certification testing suite, InstallShield comes with the InstallShield Best Practices (ISBP) validation suite. Validators in this suite alert you if your installation violates any best-practices guidelines.

• ISBP01: Verifies that no feature is named 'ALL'.
• ISBP02: Verifies that no directory is named 'DATABASE'.
• ISBP03: Verifies that no ComboBox is shorter than 50 units.
• ISBP04: Verifies that properties used on dialogs are secure or restricted public properties.
• ISBP05: Verifies that no ControlEvent condition is NULL.
• ISBP06: Verifies that InstallUISequence custom actions are also sequenced in the InstallExecuteSequence.
• ISBP07: Verifies that all features have associated components and all components are associated with features.
• ISBP08: Verifies that ARPINSTALLLOCATION is set after CostFinalize in the InstallExecuteSequence.
• ISBP09: Verifies that LIMITUI is not set without ARPNOMODIFY.
• ISBP10: Verifies that AppSearch properties are secure or restricted public properties.
• ISBP11: Verifies that no precompiled .NET assemblies are being distributed.
• ISBP12: Verifies that no file is self-registered.
• ISBP13: Verifies that properties set by dialog controls and used in the installation have a default value.
• ISBP14: Verifies that each file has the correct version information or an MsiFileHash entry.
• ISBP15: Verifies that no RadioButtonGroup has Text defined.
• ISBP16: Verifies that each component with a 64-bit destination is marked as a 64-bit component.

Not only does improved validation testing increase the usefulness of InstallShield as a tool to prepare your applications for Windows 7 Logo certification, with ISBP, you can now avoid common installation issues.

Automation interface improvements in InstallShield give you more automation flexibility, lowering the number of times manual intervention through the IDE is required. Enhancements include automating functionality that was previously only available via the IDE.

 

The OverrideSystemAttributes, OverrideSystemSize, OverrideSystemVersion, and OverrideSystemLanguage properties are now available for the ISWiFile object in the automation interface; they replace the UseSystemSettings property, which is obsolete. In addition, the DeleteSubFolder and DeleteShortcut methods are available for the ISWiFolder object. Other improvements include:

• OverrideSystemAttributes—To override the development system's settings for all of the file attributes, such as Hidden, ReadOnly, Vital, and System, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Hidden, ReadOnly, Vital, and System properties are ignored. 
• OverrideSystemSize—To override the development system's file size, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Size property is ignored. 
• OverrideSystemVersion—To override the development system's file version, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Version property is ignored. 
• OverrideSystemLanguage—To override the development system's file language, set this property to True. If you set this property to False, the Languages property is ignored. DeleteSubFolder—Deletes the specified subfolder from the current folder.
• DeleteShortcut—Deletes the specified shortcut from the current folder.

 

With setup prerequisite improvements in InstallShield 2008, you have more options to specify exactly under what conditions a setup prerequisite should be installed in specific operating system versions.

The operating system version number is 5.2 for both Windows Server 2003 and 64-bit Windows XP. As a result, prerequisites that were created in earlier versions of InstallShield detected 64-bit Windows XP as Windows Server 2003. Therefore prerequisites that required Windows Server 2003 could be installed on 64-bit Windows XP systems, and those that required Windows XP could not be installed on 64-bit Windows XP systems.

To resolve this issue, the Setup Prerequisite Editor in InstallShield 2008 has been enhanced to enable you to specify whether the target system is required to be a workstation, a server, or a domain controller.

To resolve this issue for an existing prerequisite that includes a Windows Server 2003 requirement or a 64-bit Windows XP requirement, open the prerequisite in the Setup Prerequisite Editor in InstallShield 2008. On the Conditions tab, select the condition that needs to be corrected and click Modify. In the "Select the operating system on which to run the setup requirement" box, select the appropriate operating system requirement. Doing this correctly sets the new Product (OS) Type setting to the appropriate workstation, server, or domain controller value.

With unit testing in InstallShield, you can test just the XML file changes without having to build and run your entire installation.

The XML File Changes view supports namespaces in XML files. With quick and easy XML testing, you can increase the reliability of XML configurations.

InstallShield brings you deeper XML support—letting you create more flexible installations by specifying the XML encoding of an XML file.

 

With InstallShield,  you can require that end users scroll through the complete End-User License Agreement (EULA) before installation can proceed.

InstallShield includes support for disabling the Next button on the LicenseAgreement dialog until the end user reaches the end of the EULA text in the scrollable EULA control through mouse or keyboard scrolling. The end user must also select the "I accept the terms in the license agreement" option before the Next button is enabled; this behavior is the same as with earlier releases of InstallShield.

The scroll requirement is not available in the LicenseAgreement dialog by default. To use this functionality, you must add to your project the Windows Installer DLL custom action called WatchScroll. This custom action calls the EulaScrollWatcher.dll file. In addition, you must modify the Next button's Control conditions and add an event to the Memo control. This is available for Basic MSI projects.

With the click of a button, you can change themes for your project and allow for easy previews of each dialog from within the Dialogs view.

 

InstallShield Premier Edition contains all themes, while InstallShield Professional Edition contains a limited set of themes and InstallShield Express Edition an even more basic set.

Whether your installations are MSI-based, InstallScript-based, or any other project type, InstallShield has the tools you need to author professional installations optimized for Windows 7.

Windows 7-related features in InstallShield:

• Certified for Windows 7 Validation Suite - The validation suite uses pre-configured validation testing, letting you test your MSI installations for compliance with Microsoft's Windows 7 Logo requirements. The suite uses over 20 validators to automatically scan your basic MSI and InstallScript MSI.
• Support for UAC - InstallShield includes robust support for the User Account Control (UAC) functionality that Microsoft added for Windows 7, letting you eliminate unnecessary UAC prompts that spoil end users' installation experience.
• Support for Restart Manager - InstallShield integrates capabilities for more elegant application shutdown when required by an installation - minimizing reboots and simplifying and improving the overall installation experience.
• Ability to Specifically Target Windows 7 - With the Project Assistant (MSI) and Platform Dialog (InstallScript) you can specifically target your installations for Windows 7. This allows for Windows 7-specific customization, while maintaining compatibility with existing operating systems.
• Automatic MSI Log File Creation - Windows Installer supports automatic log-file creation. You can enable this option to create a log the first time you run the installation, instead of having to uninstall and re-install with the logging command line switch. If your setup fails, there is an added option to view the log file at the end of the installation.
• Better Support for Windows 7 in InstallScript Projects - Required Execution Level setting supported in InstallScript. 
• Enhancements to Setup Prerequisites - Enhancements to the Setup Prerequisite Editor in InstallShield let you flexibly and easily redistribute setup prerequisites - giving you more direct control over your installations. The Setup Prerequisite editor also lets you test for Windows 7.
• Improved Digital Signing Capabilities - Easily specify files in your project (static and dynamic) to have the InstallShield build engine digitally sign.
• Support for Elevation-free Patching - Patches, of setups that have been installed with elevated privileges, can be run without the end user seeing the elevation prompt.
• UAC Setup Prerequisites Support - You can define a prerequisite as requiring administrative privileges - allowing you to run prerequisites with elevated privileges and then dropping down to user privileges to run the MSI user interface.
• Support to Display UAC Shield Icon - Ready to Install dialog will display "UAC shield" icon on the "Install" button in new projects. Users can add Shield icon to any MSI button via the dialog editor.  Shield Icon will show up in the dialog editor (when run under Windows 7).
• Additional Windows 7 Support for InstallScript Projects - End users can run InstallScript One-Click Install installations on Windows 7 systems, even if they have limited privileges; if elevated privileges are required because of the required execution level specified in the installation's manifest, the appropriate UAC prompt is displayed when the Setup.exe file is launched. 

InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions contain Windows 7 items listed above. InstallShield Express Edition does not contain validation or InstallScript and, therefore, does not contain Windows 7 Validation or InstallScript-related Windows 7 support. InstallShield Express Edition also does not have a Setup Prerequisite Editor.

For InstallShield 2008, many usability enhancements were made to some of the views, including the Releases, Custom Actions, and Sequences views.

The Releases view has been reorganized from a single-grid view to a tabbed-grid view by category, making it easier to find and change settings. The settings in the Distribution view have been moved to the new Postbuild tab in the Releases view to consolidate all release-related tasks in one view. These enhancements are available in the Premier, Professional, and Express Editions.

For the Premier and Professional Editions, the Custom Actions view and the Sequences view have been combined into a more robust view called the Custom Actions and Sequences view. The combined view supports drag-and-drop editing and copying, enabling users to easily sequence custom actions. 

InstallShield supports all 32- and 64-bit versions of .NET 2.0, in both Basic MSI and InstallScript. Easily check your configuration for any of the listed versions of the .NET Framework and download if necessary. Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects support 64-bit versions of .NET 4.0, 3.5, 3.0, and 2.0 as setup prerequisites. The list includes:

• .NET Framework 2.0 (x64)
• .NET Framework 2.0 (x64) Language Packs
• .NET Framework 2.0 (IA64)
• .NET Framework 2.0 (IA64) Language Packs
• .NET Framework 3.0 (x64)
• .NET Framework 3.5
• .NET Framework 4.0

InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions offer support for both 32- and 64-bit .NET versions, while the InstallShield Express Edition does not support the 64-bit versions.

InstallShield lets you take full advantage of current Microsoft technology by supporting the latest Windows Mobile platforms (including Windows Embedded CE 6.x). You can now easily create installations for mobile devices and expand your deployment to Palm handheld devices and all Window CE platforms—including PocketPC and Smartphone.

The Basic MSI, InstallScript MSI, and Smart Device project types in InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions offer this support. In addition, the Express and Smart Device project types in InstallShield Express Edition offer this support.

InstallShield supports the latest Direct X 9.0c platform, letting you take advantage of current Microsoft technology. You can now use the Windows Installer-based object for Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects in compressed and silent installations. In addition, you can run your installation in deferred system context so that it can be run with elevated privileges on Windows Vista.

 

Two Direct X 9.0c objects are available in the InstallShield Premier and Professional Editions: One for Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI and one for InstallScript. InstallShield Express Edition only has the object for Basic MSI.

Installing an MSI-based setup on Windows 7 can be tricky, with the User Account Control (UAC) functionality that Microsoft added for Windows Vista. Attempting to run as a standard user in a UAC-enabled Windows 7 environment can be a serious challenge. Of note, one has to deal with a number of UAC prompts that seek to verify credentials for a valid administrator account before launching a task that requires a full administrator access.

Although the purpose of these prompts is to ensure that no malicious application can silently install when the end user is attempting to install your application, these prompts can spoil the overall user experience. InstallShield lets you create installations that handle UAC authorization requests in a user-friendly manner, requesting elevated privileges required for all installations just once, and using those privileges throughout the installation.

Use the Require Administrative Privileges setting in the General Information view to specify at a project-wide basis whether administrative privileges are required for an installation. Also, use the Required Execution Level setting in the Releases view to specify the minimum level required by your installation's Setup.exe file for running the installation (the setup launcher, any setup prerequisites, and the .msi file) on Windows platforms.

In addition, numerous previous enhancements to Windows 7-related features in InstallShield provide an even better UAC experience. The UAC shield logo added on the "Install" button on ReadyToInstall dialog in Basic MSI projects indicates that that the installation may require elevated privileges.

InstallShield comes with full support for digital signatures, letting you save time by digitally signing all your files at build time.  This includes signing with certificates stored in .pfx files (in addition to InstallShield's pre-existing ability to sign with certificates stored in .spc+.pvk file pairs).

Usability improvements to the IDE make it easy to view additional information. Improved efficiency of file interaction in Files and Folders view along with more customizable views give you better control over the IDE. You can show/hide panes in Files and Folders view, Registry view, and Redistributables view (which now shows additional information for setup prerequisites). A right-click option lets you add files and browse for files in Files and Folders view.

 

InstallShield improved SQL support and support for Web-based technologies such as IIS 7 and SSL—used in SaaS deployments—make it easier for you to deploy Windows-based Web applications.

SQL support is available in the Premier and Professional Editions, but not in the Express Edition.

In addition, you can create only one Web site per installation in InstallShield Express Edition. InstallShield Premier Edition and InstallShield Professional Edition support the creation of more than one Web site per installation.

InstallShield supports Windows Server 2008, letting you take advantage of current Microsoft technology. You can now specifically target your installations for Windows Server 2008.

 

 

InstallShield comes with a major InstallScript engine overhaul for increased reliability. Several enhancements have been made to the InstallScript language—new and revised variables, functions, and constants are now available. These changes were made and available since InstallShield 12.

The validation suite in InstallShield lets you easily test your installations for Windows 7 compatibility, so you can ensure that your applications are optimized for Microsoft's latest Windows operating system.

In addition, getting your application "Certified for Windows 7" lets end users know that your product takes full advantage of Windows 7 capabilities. InstallShield lets you pre-test your installations against the extensive "Certified for Windows 7" program guidelines before you apply for certification - saving you time and money.

InstallShield's validation suite automatically scans your Basic MSI and InstallScript MSI projects for:

• Compliance with all internal consistency evaluators (ICEs)
• Digital signature of executables and DLLs
• Exclusion of Windows Protected Files
• Approved installation target directory
• ...and many more validation checks

If Windows 7 compatibility issues are identified, InstallShield reports the specific issue and offers additional information to help you troubleshoot and get your installation ready for Windows 7 certification in no time.

This new version, which includes the latest binary files from Microsoft, is available for any Basic MSI, InstallScript, or InstallScript MSI projects that you create in InstallShield.
 
Support for DIFx 2.1 enables you to:

 

• Fully test drivers more easily before shipping final (signed) versions.
• Remove binary files associated with a driver during uninstallations.
• Target any 64-bit machines.
• Hide the Plug and Play Connect Device to Computer dialog.
• Remove the Add/Remove Programs entry for a device.
• Remove the Reinstall the Device Drive Package if it is Already Installed dialog.
• Add the 64-bit Itanium device drive check box
• Add Use Multilingual Runtime dialogs

The Device Driver advanced setting's Common tab within the Components view enables you to specify whether the current component includes a device driver and, if so, select desired runtime installation options. The Sequence tab enables you to specify the order in which the project's device drivers (not just the current component's device drivers) should be installed.

Installations created for Windows Installer dramatically differ from traditional installations, which often results in completely starting over to create a new MSI installation for a legacy application. InstallShield Repackager captures the data placed on your system during installation and converts it into a Windows Installer package, which you can then customize and distribute according to your organization's needs.

InstallShield Repackager lets you eliminate the tedious steps involved in re-creating your entire installation—simply run your legacy application installation from InstallShield Repackager. Automatically repackage any setup to a fully compliant MSI package to ensure that your installations are compatible with all Windows OS, including Windows Vista.

Repackaging a legacy setup involves monitoring the execution of a non-Windows Installer setup and converting changes made by the setup into a Windows Installer file. Repackager comes with the Repackaging Wizard for accomplishing this task. Using this Wizard, you can select the repackaging method (either Snapshot or Installation Monitoring), specify the setup(s) you want to repackage, and run the setup(s). When the Repackaging Wizard has finished its analysis, a Repackager project (.irp) file is automatically created, which can then be modified or converted to an InstallShield Editor project (.ism) for further editing, or converted directly to a Windows Installer package (.msi).

InstallShield Collaboration and InstallAnywhere Collaboration support industry practices that will dramatically improve product quality.

• Installation requirements stored in one central file
• No more tracking down application developers for data
• No more last minute scrambles and unnecessary confusion

Designed to integrate with Microsoft Visual Studio and Eclipse development tools, InstallShield Collaboration and InstallAnywhere Collaboration let development teams capture, test, track, and use installation requirements throughout the development process.

Improved Product and Installation Quality

Installation Collaboration addresses the critical need for collaboration between application and installation developers. With it you can:

• Protect against information loss resulting from developer reassignment or turnover
• Build knowledge across the team - installation and configuration information is shared by the entire team
• Ensure higher-quality installations
• Get products to market faster
• Eliminate confusion among team members
• Improve customer satisfaction

Powerful Functionality

• Integrates with Visual Studio and Eclipse for maximum convenience and ease-of-use
• Creates an engine-independent XML file, which can be used to automatically create a setup for MSI and Java-based installations
• Allows developers to unit-test a local installation of the code base
• Enables developers to "check in" and "check out" the XML file in source code control systems

Clear Line of Responsibility
Collaboration establishes a clear line of responsibilities among distributed developer teams:

• Installation developer remains the expert on the creation of the setup
• Installation developer receives explicit contributions from application developers-communicated through the XML file
• Application developers become active partners in the creation of the final installation