What's New in Deployment
Deployment in Visual Studio 2008 has changed with the enhancement of ClickOnce deployment and Windows Installer deployment. For a discussion of the options available for deployment, see Choosing a Deployment Strategy.
ClickOnce Deployment
ClickOnce deployment enables you to deploy self-updating Windows and console applications that can be installed, updated, and run from a Web site. For more information, see ClickOnce Deployment.
Starting in Visual Studio 2008 SP1, ClickOnce deployment includes the following feature enhancements:
Support for publishing unsigned manifests. For more information, see "Generating an Unsigned Manifest" in How to: Sign Application and Deployment Manifests.
Enhancements to the Publish Options dialog box. These enhancements include support for configuring the following options:
File Associations.
Error URL, which specifies a Web site that is displayed in dialog boxes that are encountered during ClickOnce installations.
Suite name, which specifies the name of the folder on the Start menu in which the application will be installed.
Exclude Deployment Provider URL, which specifies whether to exclude the deployment provider URL from the deployment manifest.
For more information, see Publish Options Dialog Box.
Starting in Visual Studio 2008, ClickOnce deployment has been enhanced in the following ways:
ClickOnce supports the deployment of WPF Web Browser Applications. Because these applications are hosted in a Web browser, they require special deployment and security settings. When you build and deploy these applications, Visual Studio provides the appropriate user interface and default values in the IDE. For more information, see Publish Page, Project Designer.
ClickOnce gives ISVs the option to re-sign the application manifest (using strong name signing) to apply their customer's own company name, application name, and deployment/support URL to it. However, when end users install the application, the ISV's original company branding will still appear on the "Do you want to trust this application?" dialog box. For more information, see the check box called Use application manifest for trust information in Publish Options Dialog Box.
You can build and deploy Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) applications by using the Project Designer's Publish page or the Publish Wizard. For more information, see Publish Page, Project Designer or Publish Wizard.
ClickOnce supports manifest generation under User Account Control (UAC) on Windows Vista. For more information, see ClickOnce Deployment on ClickOnce Deployment on Windows Vista.
ClickOnce supports file associations to identify a file name extension that is to be associated with the application. For more information, see <fileAssociation> Element (ClickOnce Application) and ClickOnce Application Manifest.
Windows Installer Deployment
Windows Installer deployment has been updated for Windows Vista and the latest .NET Framework versions:
The .NET Framework Launch Condition supports targeting applications for the new .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 versions.
Windows Vista support. Windows Installer has been updated so that the user's installation experience on Windows Vista is smooth, even when you run under User Account Control (UAC). Installations do not prompt for elevation when setup.exe starts. Prerequisite components and the application (caboose) are elevated only when it is required. In cases of elevation, the user is prompted for administrator's credentials. For more information, see Windows Installer Deployment on Windows Vista.
For more information, see Windows Installer Deployment.
See Also
Concepts
What's New in Visual Studio 2008
Choosing a Deployment Strategy
Other Resources
Deploying Applications and Components
Change History
Date |
History |
Reason |
|---|---|---|
|
July 2008 |
Added section describing updated functionality for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. |
SP1 feature change. |