Comments on my distribution strategy please!

M

mickn66

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Nov 2, 2002
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I’d like to know if people consider this a good strategy for distributing my software, which is a small shareware program. On my website I plan on putting two versions of my software – one with the .NET Framework bootstrapper and one without. That way users who know they have the framework already can download the much smaller version. If they attempt to install that version and they don’t have the .NET framework, I will have a message direct them to download the version of my software that has the .NET bootstrapper with it. Please let me know any opinions or issues you may know of. Thanks :)
 
What about the other pre-requisites for .Net?

For example, Windows 2000 Sp4, Year 2000 Updates for Windows 98, Internet Explorer 6 Sp1, Jet etc.

The Bootstrapper doesn't install these.
 
littleisharp said:
What about the other pre-requisites for .Net?

For example, Windows 2000 Sp4, Year 2000 Updates for Windows 98, Internet Explorer 6 Sp1, Jet etc.

The Bootstrapper doesn't install these.
Click to expand...

That's a good question, do you have any suggestions about that? The way it is now, I have a readme file that tells the user to go to windowsupdate - but I don't particularly like that solution because for those people who are less computer-literate, it's not necessarily so obvious how to get the .NET framework from windowsupdate - because it's not a "critical" update.
 
I'm using this bootstrapper app on codeproject:

dotNetBootstrapper

It goes a lot further than the microsoft bootstrapper app, and can be configured to check for all the other pre-requisites. You can either prompt the user to download them from a specific site, or you can include them with the install (which is fine if you're deploying by CD, not so if it's a web deployment).

Are any of your users on Windows 98? there's a whole ream of stuff you need before a .Net app wll run.
 
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