InstallAware Blog

Innovation is relentless at InstallAware. We’re launching InstallAware Virtualization 5 on Friday this week, together with an exciting challenge.

Take the InstallAware Virtualization 5 Challenge:

Find a faster setup capture utility(1) for any application virtualization platform – be it Microsoft or VMware – and your license is on us! Yes, InstallAware has really built the fastest setup capture utility in the industry. Is it any wonder that SD Times named InstallAware a “Leader of the Software Development Industry” this year?

Take a look at what’s new in this most significant upgrade to InstallAware Virtualization:

- New PackageAware: Simply the fastest setup capture in the industry. Eliminate the need for clean machine captures. PackageAware for InstallAware Virtualization 5 also includes the ability to save system snapshots and compare any arbitrary two snapshots for the ultimate flexibility in creating virtualized application packages.

- Windows 8 RTM: Windows 8 has been released to manufacturing and will soon be shipping on all OEM systems. InstallAware Virtualization 5 produces virtualized applications which perform admirably on the final release version of Windows 8.

- Bug Fixes: Stability is key with application virtualization! File sizes are no longer returned as 0 for files that are contained inside the virtual file system. Calling certain registry APIs which access the virtual registry no longer cause crashes.

- User Requests: Ask and you shall receive! Set the virtual drive volume name and serial number. Share files and registry data between 32 bit and 64 bit processes. Optionally virtualize writes to files that physically exist on the real file system. Hide virtualized files in standard Windows File Open/Save dialogs.

Order your InstallAware Virtualization 5 licenses by September 28th, and save $1,000 with your 50% Lightning Repackager discount:

http://www.installaware.com/virtualizat … htning.asp

This introductory pricing is coupled with a 100% royalty free, agent-less model for truly cost-efficient, hassle-free virtualization – and backed by our unconditional 30 day money back guarantee, which is indispensable given the inherently challenging nature of application virtualization:

http://www.installaware.com/virtualizat … htning.asp

Enjoy your introductory Lightning Repackager tier prices, but you must place your order by Friday, September 28th – this pricing tier is offered only during major new version launches!

(1) Any commercial, free, or open source application virtualization setup capture utility, demonstrated to work faster than PackageAware, based on the system snapshot method, qualifies for the InstallAware Virtualization 5 Challenge.

InstallAware NX 14.1, currently live, adds the following bug fixes:

The Convert Path command now expands environment variables, supports relative paths, and prepends the setup folder to paths that lack drive letters.

The .NET Plug-In Bridge libraries and samples have been updated with further fixes.

InstallAware NX 14.05, currently live, adds the following bug fixes:

New projects created using any of the project wizards mistakenly suggested that script and project files not yet saved were marked read-only.
Some incorrect combinations of parameters passed to the Evaluate Expression command caused access violations during setup compilation.

An Interview for a Microsoft Internship

While I was at college, I applied for an internship at Microsoft. What better company to work at in the 90s? When I passed the first round of resume screening, and was invited to the on campus face to face interview, I was thrilled.

The first question was about which product I used most frequently. I responded, ‘Netscape’. This is circa 1996 I was applying for a Product Manager position, so my interviewer asked me what I would do if I was the Product Manager for Netscape. I responded, ‘I would turn it into a cross-platform operating system, so I could break the Microsoft/Intel desktop monopoly.’ That promptly ended the first part of the interview. I got the sense that the interview would be divided into two parts, and I had a good chance for the second part of the interview – since I had aced the first part in just a few minutes.

The second question, however, proved to be too tough for me. I was asked how I would design a TV remote. I was given a piece of paper to draw the remote on, which I did. As I was explaining the various buttons and what they did, we spent the remainder of the interview – almost all of the 30 total minutes – discussing Teletext. My European readers will already know what this is, and my American readers may be aware that it does not exist their side of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince my Microsoft interviewer that indeed, on the European continent, Teletext existed as a technology.

Sadly, I was not called in for the third round of interviews on the Microsoft campus

 

Microsoft Plays into Apple’s and Google’s Hand with Windows 8

Whoa, what a leap! What does the above have to do with Windows 8 and its much controversial user interface, all of a sudden? Read on…

Apple and Google are smart enough to realize that they cannot directly challenge Microsoft on the Desktop. We’re all familiar with Steve Ballmer’s chant “Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers.” If you’re not, you should promptly familiarize yourself with it. Windows is hugely successful because of the countless applications built for it. And how easy it has traditionally been to build applications for Windows, compared to every other platform. Neither OSX, nor Linux has the number and diversity of applications that Windows has. Companies like Borland have tried to build a “Visual Basic” for Linux in the past, which might have been a game changer for Linux had it ever been realized.

So what did they do? Apple came up with the iPod. Then the iPhone, which is essentially a turbo-charged iPod with cellular capabilities. Then the iPad, which is essentially a turbo-charged iPhone with tablet capabilities.

Google came up with Android. Oh, they also made fun of Microsoft, a company whose slogan was “Information at your fingertips,” but failed miserably at realizing that vision – with their stellar search engine. Also, they followed up the act with the stuff about Google Documents, etc. – getting all your data online.

Now I am NOT a big fan of the cloud. Not only because the cloud and desktop software installations are kind of…shall we say non-synergic But also, because I have trust issues that a massive corporation (any massive corporation) can be trusted with all of my data and files. I want them sitting in front of me…physically. But that’s just me.

Leaving my misgivings aside…do you see the pieces of the puzzle coming together now? Apple and Google ARE finally breaking Microsoft’s Desktop monopoly. Indeed, the Desktop is becoming increasingly irrelevant through the invention of multiple devices (if not cross platform operating systems) that are being used by more and more people daily.

Do you get the biggest irony of all? Microsoft are playing directly into Apple’s and Google’s hand by ruining their only pillar of strength: the Desktop. By hiding the Desktop in Windows 8, indeed by ruining the Desktop experience in every way imaginable, they are doing what Apple and Google could have never done on their own: They are running the Desktop into the ground, the one and only strategic advantage that they have had since their founding days of MS-DOS! What they’re doing is like retarding MS-DOS into CP/M when faced by the threat of DR-DOS.

Hello? Are the Microsoft Monkeys totally unchecked these days? The Microsoft Monkeys got Vista out, and then Windows 7 checked that sad development. What is up with Windows 8 though? Windows 8 is Microsoft playing into Apple’s and Google’s hand. There is no other way of looking at it. Who’s going to check Windows 8? At what cost to the Desktop industry? Will there be any recovering from this for all of us ISVs?

Shame on the old guard at Microsoft. I’ve been witnessing their platform devolve with the whole NT 6.x product line. Now I’m not sure it’ll survive long enough to see a recovery with a future NT 7.x product line. I suppose the rise and fall of every single company is inevitable. But seriously…shame on you, old guard of Microsoft. Soon there’ll be far more fun “apps” than “applications” and it won’t matter what you do.

 

Of Embarcadero

This may be even more tangentially related, but here goes.

Shame on Embarcadero, for shipping RAD Studio XE3 with an installer built using an unlicensed version of InstallAware. Is your company seriously not rich enough to buy a license – or to grant InstallAware non-expiring licenses for your own product per the product sharing treaty that you unilaterally violated?

Both Delphi and Windows are being so mis-managed by their owners, that us ISVs will probably need to start looking for jobs soon.

In case anybody wants to offer me a job, please feel free to email me for my resume

InstallAware NX version 14.03 (just posted live) contains the following bug fixes:

The Run as Administrator option in Create Shortcut was not working with some combinations of command parameters.
.NET Plug-In Bridge contained various bridge errors and the C# example project had incorrect code.

InstallAware 14.02:

A new Microsoft Report Viewer 2012 runtime is available, including its pre-requisite runtime Microsoft System CLR Types for SQL Server 2012.

InstallAware NX version 14.02 (launching this week) contains the following bug fixes:

Re-creating a previously existing virtual folder incorrectly changed the root website path.
Multiple OneNote Table Of Contents.onetoc2 files were included in the build and runtimes by mistake.
The Glass setup theme had a bug on destination dialog where the full space and remaining space positions were swapped.
IIS virtual folder creation crashed on Windows 8 when MIME types were not specified as part of the operation.
The help file incorrectly indicated that the build engine was redistributable.
Due to a memory leak, random failures occurred when passwords were specified on the command line.

InstallAware 14.01 had fixed compiler variable resolution issues.

IDE

The Summary, UAC, and ISO design view now lets you set the ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009 software identification (SWID) tag for your application.
The New Project dialog now lets you promote any setup project into a project template.
The Replace dialog now replaces all instances of text found in a setup command, instead of replacing only the first instance.
The Authenticode Signature design view now has an option to automatically code sign all .EXE, .DLL, .OCX, .SYS, .CPL, .DRV, and .SCR files being installed by setup for Windows 8 logo program compliance.
The Build Settings design view now has an option to automatically build all setup layouts as MSI files.
The Project Manager now opens all script and dialog browsers inside the active project folder.
The Add Dialogs to Project window now permits adding more than one custom dialog simultaneously.
You may now create and navigate to bookmarks inside the MSIcode script editor.
The code navigation drop-downs now include the full list of available MSIcode script bookmarks.
The IDE now prompts to confirm when you attempt to save a read-only file, to ensure your project folders remain synchronized with source control.
The IDE most recently used file list now accommodates double the number of projects and displays full project paths on mouse-over.

Tools and Libraries

The Dialog Editor now automatically refactors rules when the name of a dialog control is changed.
A Visual Studio 2012 Add-In is now available. The add-in automatically generates and builds InstallAware setups for your Visual Studio 2012 solutions. These may then be built as App-V virtualized packages using the Build App-V Package tool.
All Visual Studio Add-In generated projects have been updated for the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 eco-system, automatically including the new Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 runtimes as necessary.
Group Policy Wizard generated MSI files now do not display dual User Account Control elevation prompts. Elevation prompts are no longer hidden in the background.
Group Policy Wizard generated MSI files now display progress feedback with cancel support when extracting large payloads.
The App-V Viewer tool has been updated with performance and stability improvements.
The command line build tool may now add patch references not included in the original project.
A new MiaBuildProjectEy function is available as part of the automation interface which displays the build window with a parent handle.
A new .NET assembly is now available as part of the automation interface for use within the .NET eco-system.
New MFC, C#, and ASP.NET samples are available for use with the automation interface.
The Product Name and Product Version fields in the version information structures of built EXE files are now populated.

Plug-Ins

A new .NET Plug-In Bridge is available for calling managed code plug-in assemblies from your setups.
A new runtime is available for Microsoft SQL Server 2012.
The runtimes for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, 2.0 with Service Pack 1, and 2.0 with Service Pack 2 have been updated to enable installation on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft Visual C++ 11 Runtime in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Native Client in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.
New runtimes are available for the Microsoft IIS Express 8 Web Server in both 32 bit and 64 bit flavors.

Setup Engine

The new $CHARSET_OVERRIDE$ pre-defined variable permits to automatically change dialog font character sets without having to duplicate dialogs in multi-lingual setups.
Setup billboards now resume automatically from the last billboard shown instead of resetting to the first billboard between different displays of progress dialogs.
The $NATIVE_LOGGING$ pre-defined variable can no longer be overridden unless a full file path (including full folder information) is provided.
Double-buffering for setup controls is now selectively enabled based on the active system theme, for improved display of setup controls.
The new #SIGN_ALL_INPLACE# pre-defined compiler variable controls whether code signing occurs in-place or out-of-place during a build.

New Scripting Commands

The new Evaluate XPath Query command runs an XPath query against a specified XML file.
The new For Each and Next commands allow for the construction of for loops.

Updated Scripting Commands

The Advertised Shortcut/Create Shortcut commands can now run applications as administrator on operating systems with User Account Control (or run them with alternate credentials on operating systems older than Windows Vista).
The Advertised Shortcut/Create Shortcut commands can now prevent the automatic inclusion of shortcuts on the new Windows 8 Start Screen.
The Advertised Shortcut/Create Shortcut commands can now prevent the user pinning of applications.
The Break and Continue commands allow for immediately terminating or continuing to the next iteration of for loops.
The Get System Settings command now supports Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine detection.

The Most Recently Used Files listing was half empty.
Unpin from Start Screen was not functioning correctly with the final release of Windows 8.
Set Breakpoint was not displaying the breakpoint after a bookmark had been inserted.
Edit XML File lacked a Browse button to pick the XML document to edit visually.
64 bit ODBC data sources were not created successfully using the Native Engine.
The automation interface lacked a build function which permitted specifying the parent window handle to the build window.
Read-only files were always overwritten when saving projects.
The Impact theme contained a production progress dialog from InstallAware Virtualization, instead of the actual template progress dialog with interactive HTML.
Inserting AVI animations in the Dialog Editor caused seemingly random errors with locating the AVI file.
Multiple files could not be selected to add to a setup project as new dialogs.
The Project Manager did not remember the previous folder and/or the project folder used when last adding resources to a project.
Patch references could not be added via the command line Build Tool.
Single Instance setups, when launching second or more instances, would crash with random errors.
The Native Engine did not properly load old installation data in certain cases.
Patches did not properly load old installation data if the product name was changed between versions.
Run commands in the IDE did not run new direct MSI built setups.
Some duplicate compiler variables were re-injected in duplicates (or more) when a build failed with a compiler variable conditional error.
Batch builds set some build mode compiler variables incorrectly.
Patches built after batch builds may have failed to enable the patch compiler variables, causing problems with actual patch application.
Compiler variable override values sometimes failed to override their desired targets if a default value was previously defined.
Patch references did not accept new direct MSI built setups.
The Group Policy built MSI files lacked payload extraction progress report.
The Group Policy built MSI files could not be aborted once starting extraction.
The Group Policy built MSI files caused double User Account Control elevation prompts.
The Group Policy built MSI files caused User Account Control elevation prompts that were sometimes hidden in the background.
Adding new scripts did not default to the current project folder.
Saving existing scripts did not default to the current project folder.
Automatic code signing for all setup binaries failed after one effort, instead of accounting for intermittent network connectivity issues.
The application user model identifier was sometimes not being properly set on Windows 8.
If Visual Studio 2012 was started at least once before installing InstallAware, the InstallAware Add-In for Visual Studio 2012 would not be registered with Visual Studio.
Very slow runtime performance with InstallAware setups using large scripts.
Incorrectly overriding the NATIVE_LOGGING pre-defined variable without path information caused complete system drive deletion.
Some feature descriptions in the InstallAware setup were not fitting in their allocated space.
Shortcuts could not be pinned into the Start Screen with the final release of Windows 8.
Low resolution icons were incorrectly used in the New Project | Custom tab when promoting setup projects into user made templates.
There was no programmatic method to update the character set of dialog controls.
The documentation for Set Access Control did not make it clear that the command is non-recursive in nature.
The Display Dialog command editor control states malfunctioned in certain cases, leaving certain settings disabled until the command editor was re-initialized with the same command line twice in succession.
ASP.NET version 4 application pools created by the Create Virtual Folder command sometimes contained superfluous versioning information in the application pool name.
ASP.NET version 4 application pools created by the Create Virtual Folder command sometimes were accompanied by an unintended ASP.NET version 2 application pool in the desired name.
Literal file exclusions were not honored by the Install Files command – unless wildcards were used, the exclusions would be still included in setup.
The If command editor control states malfunctioned in certain cases, leaving certain settings disabled until the command editor was re-initialized with the same command line twice in succession.
The GlowLabel control malfunctioned when double buffering states were being intelligently managed,
The .NET Plug-In Bridge did not properly pass the state of variables back to the setup script.
Installing .NET versions 2 through 3.5x failed on Windows 8.
InstallAware built plug-ins did not correctly set their parent window handle to the InstallAware IDE.
The Dialog Editor did not refactor rules when a component name was changed, instead deleting all rules referring to the old component name.
Progress billboards did not resume from the last billboard shown between different displays of HTML progress enabled billboards, all activated within the same setup session.
Search and Replace did not replace all occurrences of a given string literal in a single setup command.
The Set Variable command editor sometimes did not reset the state of the “Persistent” option.
The Continue command did not re-evaluate the loop conditional for While loops, unconditionally skipping to the next loop iteration.
A superfluous PackageAware folder would be created every time the InstallAware IDE or a built setup was run.
When setup invoked system tray commands, and the Explorer shell was unavailable or not started yet, setup would fail with a runtime error.
All list views used in the IDE and setup engine lacked translucent selection rectangles.
The SQL Server 2012 (Denali) runtime installation failed on Windows 8.
Virtual Machine detection failed to detect Hyper-V based virtual machines.
The Portuguese spelling was incorrect in built setups and various places throughout the InstallAware tool chain.
The command line Build Tool had intermittent build failures when running on 64 bit Windows.
The InstallAware IDE instance name was incorrect.
The Convert Path command behavior was undefined when the specified path did not already exist.
Editing a Create Shortcut command in the visual designers sometimes lost the associated icon.
In rare instances, when a lot of identically named files were being included inside a single Web Media Block, the Weblock processing could fail at runtime, resulting in misleading extraction failure errors.
Hybrid installation projects which combined 32 bit and 64 bit driver installations inside the same Web Media Block or the main setup executable would succeed in installing only the last referenced bitness driver in the setup script.
The product name field in built EXE files was not injected.
The product version field in built EXE files was not injected.