Hi,
ClickOnce supports the idea of a non-impactful install. What this
essentially results in is that when you install an application, the
application gets installed to the user's profile (under documents and
settings). You cannot change this, however, the documentation says that
you can change the root folder to something other than documents and
settings if you wanted to (I have not see an example of this, however).
You also asked about preventing start menu shortcuts. Offline
applications get entries into the start menu and the add/remove
programs list. I don't think that this is configurable, however,
getting rid of the shortcut is easy enough. After ClickOnce installs an
application, it immediately launches the application. ClickOnce
provides an API that you can use to customize installation and updates.
The API exposes a property called IsFirstRun. You can query this
property in your onload() of the form and then delete the shortcut.
http://www.sayedhashimi.com
Shameless Book Plug: Deploying .NET Applications: Learning MSBuild and
ClickOnce
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590596528/104-3580900-1662334?v=gla...
