Once again, the Advanced Installer Team will be at Microsoft Ignite. Visit our booth #2354 and you'll be able to speak directly with the engineers that are building Advanced Installer. Besides the free lessons you can also get our free Advanced Installer swags.

It has been some time since we made our last release but we haven't spent all summer at the beach. We've got some great stuff to for you and version 2.8 includes just a few, so stay tuned for more.

On August 2nd, 2016 Microsoft has released the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. One of the most important features from this update is Project Centennial, this support allows you to easily migrate your Win32 applications to UWP, thus be able to publish the app in the Windows store, without re-writing your code.

Assess and plan your packaging process easily by validating your applications against the App-V compatibility rules.

The Anniversary Update for Windows 10 is getting closer. Along with it we are working on Advanced Installer to get you ready.

Verify what resources were added, modified or removed in the repackaged installation by comparing the results with the original installation, all within Advanced Installer's GUI.

Microsoft has announced starting this summer App-V will be a built-in Windows feature. This brings desktop virtualization to a new level. If you want to learn more on the topic from the industry experts join us in Boston at BriForum 2016, between July 26-28th.

Advanced Installer brings the future Windows application packaging and deployment standard, AppX, to your existing Win32/.NET applications, through full support for Project Centennial.

Our team just came back from London. We were extremely happy to be one of the sponsors for what is probably the best conference on desktop virtualization from Europe, BriForum.

Use precise data from Installer Analytics to decide when it is better to include a prerequisite into your installer or to use a launch condition. Making the right choice can help you simplify the installation steps, thus provide a faster and simpler installation process for your users.

Package your Win32/.NET application as an AppX package and leverage all the benefits of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Without any changes you can have your current application in the Windows Store and get access to all the new WinRT APIs.

While much attention goes into the design of software products, when it comes to commercial software sold to businesses, it is often the installer that receives the least amount of attention when in comparison to the impact that the component has on the customer. The customer is not only the end-user that considers your application to be their personal “mission critical app“.

Virtual machines are mandatory if you want to optimize your testing or repackaging efforts. Version 12.8 includes built-in support to create new virtual machines directly from within Advanced Installer.

Merge modules are the Windows Installer standard for reusable setup logic and resources. Development teams can build and distribute MSM files that include installer components and functionality shared between applications.

You might think that the users downloading your application also install it. That is not true. If you want to see how many users install your application successfully you need to track the application, in this case its setup package.

The RC Text Bounds Checker is an open source command line tool that helps you build an application UI which will look good on any screen size, no matter its DPI settings.

Finding bugs is never easy. You get customer complaints, spend tens of hours reproducing and fixing the problems, then start all over again. It's the never-ending circle of software development.

The 12.7 release is a major security update containing two very important security features:

A vulnerability in all Windows OSes allows a malicious DLL to hijack your EXE installer upon launch. While the EXE shows your legitimate digital signature the attacker DLL will be able to run in the background.

Starting with January 1st, 2016 Microsoft is implementing a mandatory update of the Digital Signature system from SHA-1 to SHA-2 in order to deal with the decreasing security of the SHA-1 digital signatures. A limited dual-signing system is supported for backwards compatibility.