InstallAware

Evaluated the product for a few days and it does fill in our needs to create installations of our product.

Here are a few suggestions and problems I ran into.

Dialog Editor:

- Would be nice if controls could also be moved with the arrow keys for precise positioning
- Also be nice to have some alignment functions available
- Properties of the controls that can be used are not documents, its unclear what all these mean (besides common sense)
- You state that you have support for Alphablending and transparancy, but what is missing is support for Alpha-Blended images like PNG (or Jpeg, BMP with Alpha channel). Icons do support this, but these are not resizable.
- Path information appears automatically in the baggage file at some point causes an Avi to fail. The user didn't enter this, so this is wrongly done by the application. Only way to solve this is to manually remove the path info from the baggage file, which is not wat you want.

Installaware:

- Run Program command has poor support to start .Net apps, Tech support could not help me with running our app.
- Dragging commands into the scripting window causes (most of the time) the window to jump all the way to the top.
- Selecting a new theme causes all current edits to the dialog to be overwritten. I guess the new selected theme will be copied into the project folder. Although there is a message displaying before selecting a new theme stating this, it would be nice to be able to create a backup of your current theme, or to promote the project theme to a new theme.
- Patches / Update. If the created installer is run the user has to point to the original MSI, this makes rolling out these kind of install unusable. I am sure that I have seend this differently in InstallShield and Wise, where this wasnt necessary.

I also was wondering if you have some sort of a roadmap of new versions (including new/changed features / fixes)?

Nevertheless will we order our copy of the Installware (studio version) today.

regards
Alwin

Thanks for your feedback! Here are your solutions/workarounds:

Would be nice if controls could also be moved with the arrow keys for precise positioning:Use CTRL+Arrow keys.

Also be nice to have some alignment functions available:
Choose View | Alignment Palette on the menu.

You state that you have support for Alphablending and transparancy, but what is missing is support for Alpha-Blended images like PNG (or Jpeg, BMP with Alpha channel):
Alpha-blending is available at the dialog level. You can set the dialog property to alpha-blend the dialog itself. Images support transparency only, which is the norm for images.

Path information appears automatically in the baggage file at some point causes an Avi to fail:
Should only happen when you "save-as" a dialog.

Run Program command has poor support to start .Net apps, Tech support could not help me with running our app:
Run Program, or Run Program As, can start any type of application. We've never had users run into this before. Maybe your app expects to start up in a particular path with a given environment?

Dragging commands into the scripting window causes (most of the time) the window to jump all the way to the top:
Not sure I understand this...remember you can always select a line in the code editor and start typing directly. This is usually faster than drag-drop.

Selecting a new theme causes all current edits to the dialog to be overwritten. I guess the new selected theme will be copied into the project folder. Although there is a message displaying before selecting a new theme stating this, it would be nice to be able to create a backup of your current theme, or to promote the project theme to a new theme:
Because you are allowed to fully customize your dialogs, there is no way to programmatically "change" your theme. Its impossible to tell which controls on the dialog are thematic elements, and which are actual screen content. You can just copy your dialog files to back them up, of course.

Patches / Update. If the created installer is run the user has to point to the original MSI, this makes rolling out these kind of install unusable. I am sure that I have seend this differently in InstallShield and Wise, where this wasnt necessary:
This is a problem with every MSI installer, and InstallShield/Wise do not help with it. In fact, as described in the help file, InstallAware does help with this when you use web builds, because the setup sources are locally cached (see the topic "Patching" in the help file).

Thanks for your feedback! Hope the above fixes/workarounds help save you some more time.

Thanks for your Feedback, some usefull pointers in there.

1 remark:

I don't know where you get the knowledge that Transparancy is the norm for Images. All image packages (like Photoshop, Paint Shop etc) can create images with alpha information and we create .Net applications where Alphablended images are used all the time. They give the user a better UI experience. Transparancy only replaces one color with "nothing", causing anti-aliased images to look cheap.


1 question:

I read there is a subscription available for Installaware. How much does a subscription cost for Studio. And does the subscription quarantee the next major upgrade for free (even if its after the subscription period)?


thanks Alwin

Sorry, what I meant to say was that the BMP image format supported by the standard Windows graphic control, as well as most other popular image formats including JPG, GIF, etc. do not support alpha blending. Of course, specialized image processing tools like Adobe and Corel do have support for alpha blending, but InstallAware is not a graphic design tool! That's what I meant to say, and in fact even the transparency is an extension to what is available with the BMP format, for example.

We do have a subscription available. Its cost is 1x the cost of the product. So for example if you are ordering one Studio license, order two licenses to have a subscription. If ordering two Studio licenses, order four to have your subscription.

What you read about is probably maintenance, which covers upgrades for one year only. Maintenance is a 50% surcharge only, but this will not cover the next major upgrade for free, if it hasn't been released in a year. So I think the subscription 100% surcharge is better for you here.