I have just written my first 'serious' WinForms app in .Net2. Before going home for the day it was time to create the Deployment project. I hate doing Deployment projects. You have to worry about Framework boot strappers and the like to make it a seamless experience.....
Well not anymore!!!!
The new Setup Wizard in Setup and Deployment basically asked what type of deployment I wanted (WebForms, WinForms, etc) and whether I wanted any other files included. I created a shortcut to the project's main output (I think this is a lot easier in this version) and built it.
This was pretty similar to VS2003 up to this point.
In looking in the output directory there were two files. setup.exe and an MSI file. In a vanilla WinXP SP2 VPC I loaded the MSI file. It said politely that the Framework was required and would I like to download it from Microsoft's web site. This was pretty good but I was then faced with the web page asking what version of the framework that I wanted to download and whether it was the distributable or the SDK, etc. This is not a very good user experience.
I then thought to try the setup.exe. I am please I did! It comes up with a licensing agreement screen followed by a screen describing everything that needs to be downloaded and whether I would like it to proceed - you bet! It then downloaded the Framework V2, installed my application and it all worked and it didn't even require a reboot. I guess it would also download MDAC (maybe DirectX) if required but I have not looked into that yet.
This is now a really nice experience for both the developer and the user.
I am one happy camper. Well does MS!
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