.NET Shareware

[Mitchell Vincent]

I recently jumped on the .NET bandwagon and have been playing around in
Visual Studio and reading a few books for about 2 weeks now. It occurs
to me that I've never seen a desktop application written in .NET, at
least none that ever required me to install the framework (I only
recently installed it with Visual Studio).

I know there are people that are developing shareware using .NET and I'm
curious as to how people are handling the framework not being installed.
Are you just listing it as a requirement or is your installer checking
for it? Are you using something like Thinstall, which claims to link all
the .NET dependencies to the EXE?

Thanks guys!

 

[Steven]

Mitchell,

I used the "bootstrapper" plug-in from Microsoft's MSDN site. This Visual
Studio plug-in let's you add a Setup-project to your vb.net solution, which
creates a Setup that checks if the framework is installed. When you add the
..net Framework distributable (dotnetfx.exe) it's automatically installed if
it isn't present on the system.

Check out this link for the "bootstrapper" and more info;
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/tools/bootstrapper/

Greetings, Steven

I recently jumped on the .NET bandwagon and have been playing around in
Visual Studio and reading a few books for about 2 weeks now. It occurs to
me that I've never seen a desktop application written in .NET, at least
none that ever required me to install the framework (I only recently
installed it with Visual Studio).

I know there are people that are developing shareware using .NET and I'm
curious as to how people are handling the framework not being installed.
Are you just listing it as a requirement or is your installer checking for
it? Are you using something like Thinstall, which claims to link all the
.NET dependencies to the EXE?

Thanks guys!

I choose Polesoft Lockspam to fight spam, and you?
http://www.polesoft.com/refer.html

 

[Mitchell Vincent]

Mitchell,

I used the "bootstrapper" plug-in from Microsoft's MSDN site. This Visual
Studio plug-in let's you add a Setup-project to your vb.net solution, which
creates a Setup that checks if the framework is installed. When you add the
.net Framework distributable (dotnetfx.exe) it's automatically installed if
it isn't present on the system.

Check out this link for the "bootstrapper" and more info;
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/downloads/tools/bootstrapper/

Good information, thanks very much..

However, this file is 23 megs. The largest of my current projects has a
download that is barely over 1 meg in size. I not sure how keen users
will be about downloading a 30 meg installer program for some shareware.
Granted it is business shareware, but shareware just the same.

Any comments about that?

 

[Aaron Smith]

Instead of including it, make it a requirement that they already have it
installed. I can remember a time when I would download shareware that
need a VB runtime installed. The program was only 300k, but the runtime
was a few meg. They made me download it seperately... I didn't skip over
it. I installed the runtime. I would think with high speed internet
today it wouldn't be that big of a deal, especially if it's a business app.

Aaron

 

[Brian Henry]

Windows Media Center is a desktop app and it was developed with .NET and
Managed DirectX

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [MVP]]

If it is for business, you can assume that they have broadband in most
cases, and maybe even the .NET Framework. But for individuals at home, more
than a couple of MBs is too much, not everybody has broad band, at least in
some countries...

 

[Mitchell Vincent]

Instead of including it, make it a requirement that they already have it
installed. I can remember a time when I would download shareware that
need a VB runtime installed. The program was only 300k, but the runtime
was a few meg. They made me download it seperately... I didn't skip over
it. I installed the runtime. I would think with high speed internet
today it wouldn't be that big of a deal, especially if it's a business app.

Aaron

Do you know of any stats showing the installation percentage of the
framework? Is it on the majority of desktops these days?

 

[Aaron Smith]

No, I really don't. However, I *think* it's being included now. Wasn't
it included in XP SP2? I think windows update had it shipped down to
most desktops too. I'm not 100% sure on this, so don't quote me. We are
just now getting into the .Net here.

 

[Mitchell Vincent]

No, I really don't. However, I *think* it's being included now. Wasn't
it included in XP SP2? I think windows update had it shipped down to
most desktops too. I'm not 100% sure on this, so don't quote me. We are
just now getting into the .Net here.

I know it wasn't included in SP2 for sure but it has been on Windows
Update for quite some time as an optional update.

I'll search around for some statistics..

 

[Aaron Smith]

Post it here or e-mail it to me. I'm curious.

I know it wasn't included in SP2 for sure but it has been on Windows
Update for quite some time as an optional update.

I'll search around for some statistics..