List of New Features in InstallAware NX

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.