Hi Advanced Installer Guru's!
Let me first say that I absolutely LOVE this product! It is definitely on its way to becoming a solid competitor in the industry. I currently use the InstallShield Express product to build installs for our company, and didn't want to upgrade to the newest version due to cost. I also hated the fact that it did not use the Windows Installer to perform the install.
With that said, let me offer some suggestions that I found in building the install using the Advanced Installer. I'm sorry if any of these are repeated.
Suggestions for Improvement
- In the Project Definition, Files and Folders pane, allow sorting on any column: Name, Size, Type, or Source.
- Store relative path in the Files and Folders pane. The reason for this is that I do multi-machine development, meaning that I transfer my development work to a pocket USB drive which maps to a "K:\" setting and my home computer maps to a "C:\" drive. Since it stores all fully-qualified references, I have to go into the Project.API file via Notepad and do a change-all from "C:\" to "K:\". Not a show stopper, just an ease-of-use feature.
- When loading the Project, indicate which files could not be found in the path that was previously given (maybe hilite in red, or some sort of icon). This would quickly tell you if a file has been moved outside of the Advanced Installer environment, but the old location is still stored in the Project.AIP file.
- Allow renaming of Registry keys after defining. I created a subkey under the "Current User/Local Machine" key ("KeyA"), and another subkey under that ("KeyB"). I could not rename "KeyA".
- Ability to rename a shortcut after it has been created (not just the description, but the name itself).
- Ability to create a shortcut (for example to a web-page) right from the "Application Shortcut Folder".
- Add another sortable column in the Files and Folders pane indicating whether the file is to be Auto Registered (DLL,OCX,etc). This tells you at-a-glance what files are to be registered.
- Ability to select more than 1 file and set the "Auto Register" property for all with 1 click. As it is now, I have to select each files properties dialog to set the Auto Register indicator.
- Ability to display "Grouped" files in the Application folder. For example, I want to create two Groups (AppsGroupA and AppsGroupB) that display only the files associated with that group. Both Groups' files will be installed to the Application Folder, it just that I can display only the files I want to more easily.
Thanks, and keep up the good work!
Todd Lucas
