Advanced Installer 7.0 Release Notes

On May 25th, 2009 Caphyon Ltd. is proud to announce the release of Advanced Installer 7.0 in Free, Professional, Enterprise and Architect editions. This release is available for download on the Advanced Installer website.

The 7.0 release breaks new ground with the addition of full support for the Windows Mobile Platforms. Finally creating fully featured installers for your smartphone applications becomes just as easy as creating installers for your desktop products.

Another major addition in this release is an enhanced installation user interface. This brand new external UI implementation is laying the foundation for massive improvements on how your installers look and feel. Better Vista/Windows 7 integration, transparencies, exciting new controls and more powerful customization are ready to use in your installers.

Do you have installers already written with NSIS that you need to switch to Windows Installer? Advanced Installer 7.0 can import NSIS projects in addition to Visual Studio, WiX, Eclipse and Inno Setup. Quickly and painlessly convert them to MSI - with just a few mouse clicks.

And of course, as always, tons of smaller features come to help every-day's life of the installer developer. Application leftovers after uninstall are now a thing of the past with the built-in support for uninstall cleanup. Predefined Custom actions for port testing and application shutdowns. Prerequisites and launch conditions for XNA Framework, Windows Installer 5.0, Internet Explorer 8 and many more.

New features
  • Windows Mobile/CE support
  • Import NSIS projects
  • Enhanced installation user interface
  • Cleanup application-generated resources and settings at uninstall
  • Persist user-modified application data through upgrades and repairs
  • Predefined custom action for testing if a port is free (not bound to an application)
  • Predefined custom action for closing applications
  • Custom name in the "Add or Remove Programs" applet
  • XNA Framework predefined prerequisite and launch condition
  • Windows Installer 5.0 predefined launch condition
  • Internet Explorer 8 predefined launch condition
  • SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP1 predefined prerequisite
Enhancements
  • Option to easily ensure that all files in a folder overwrite any installed target files
  • Ability to change upgrade sequence easier
  • Updater now overwrites any installed version by default
  • A service control operation is created automatically when creating a service
  • Customizable ProductCode and UpgradeCode installer properties
  • Added support for using Windows Installer properties in shortcut working folder
  • Package validation can now locate detected issues in the Advanced Installer UI
  • Support for "Windows-1252" encoding in XML files
  • Added working directory support in "CreateExeProcess" predefined custom action
  • Ability to specify different component GUIDs for each package instance
  • Find support in multiline SmartEdit controls and Debug pane
  • Updated DIFx support to 2.1.1
Bug fixes
  • An incorrect language separator was used in the MSI Upgrades table
  • Crash deleting multiple items in merge modules view
  • File Association Wizard was not able to create two file extension starting with the same name
  • Crash deleting a stop image slideshow control event and disabling the slideshow
  • Changing service name for a control operation unchecked all unsaved options
  • Maximum size was set incorrectly for file searches when using the file picker
  • Some .NET Framework service pack prerequisites were not detected if installed by .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or .NET Framework Client Profile
  • When adding a new build the "AI_PrepareChainers" action was no longer recognized by the package
  • Install was able to skip prerequisites marked with the forced installation option
  • Extraction paths ended with a property reference were not resolved correctly
  • Crash when pasting a Text control with the FormatSize attribute
  • Deleting a component containing a shortcut corrupted the project
  • Component type not computed correctly when a project was converted to Advanced Installer 6.1 or higher
  • Crash when deleting the application used by a service
  • An icon preview was no longer displayed after converting the icon path
  • Icon files with a PNG on the first position were not recognized
  • Crash when adding an Unused dialog to the Repository
  • Main install did not start after a reboot performed by a prerequisite
  • WiX empty registry keys were not imported
  • Updates Configuration file import did not recognize the .TXT extension
  • Crash when performing a MSM build validation
  • Fix File Version for utility files generated from stubs (launchers, updaters, applets)
  • CABs generated by a mixed 32/64-bit package with merge modules did not use volume labels
  • Cache was not invalidated when the digital signature certificate was changed
  • Crash reopening a project after renaming a dialog
  • Certain custom actions did not handle HTTPS connections properly
  • Initialization events were not added for side-by-side installs which did not use FolderDlg
  • JVM provider was reset when building the project
  • IIS Authentication for web applications did not synchronize with installed User Accounts when using a property-based password
  • ICE39 validation crashed the application
  • Updater wizard could not be resized on Windows XP
  • Updater wizard was shown by default when running in "silentall" mode
  • IIS configuration changes were not always restored when rolling-back an installation