Application updater component - "one touch deployment" of desktop apps...

You do have to do an initial installation of the app on the desktop, but from then on, it will update itself automatically.  The app can run when disconnected from the network.  But you don't have the deployment nightmare of traditional smart client applications.

Take a look on MSDN (and currently on the front page of www.windowsforms.net).

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 12, 2003
  THis is great technology - I am on the verge orf scraping it into a framework of ours.
  
  The standard system has ONE major issue, though - it updates you to the CURRENT version on THE server all of the time.
  
  This is perfect for a local app, but may be deadly for a client/server system.
  
  Let me explain: we work on a CMS at the moment using a C/S approach for managing (yes, a local winapp). NOW - if you manage multiple websites with it, the websites MAY run multiple versions of the server. You can not upgrade the client and be SURE that it will work on all sites.
  
  What we try to do now is basically having defined versions identified by a XML file, and then move all the versions dll's into separate directories - and change the directory load path depending on the server you connect to.
  
  This way yo ucan have multiple versions of an app installed concurrently, automatically updating as the servers are updated :-)
• Anonymous
  April 14, 2004
  Another way to address this is by implementing a WebService that can receive info regading the environment of the client and reply to accordingly, telling the client which dll's to get based on info such as the client's OS version and other variables that can be given by the client to the webservice in the check-for-update request.