Windows Forms 2.0 Programming (Microsoft .NET Development Series)

19. ClickOnce Deployment

So far, this book has focused on the development of Windows Forms applications. At some point, though, a Windows Forms application needs to be deployed. The traditional means for doing so is via a setup application or, more recently, a Microsoft Installer (MSI) file. Both vehicles are fine for packaging application installations, although the trick is to get them executed on the desired client machines and then keep them up-to-date.

Web applications, on the other hand, offer a more primitive application and control implementation framework, but a much simpler deployment model. All that's needed to keep a web client user up-to-date is to keep the files on the web server up-to-date. Additionally, users don't have to be administrators of a particular client machine to use web applications, in contrast to many Windows-based installations.

In Windows Forms 1.x, a web-style deployment model was incorporated into Windows Forms as a technology known as HREF-Exe or No-Touch Deployment, which allowed Windows Forms applications to be hosted on and deployed from a web site. This simple technology was later augmented by Microsoft with the richer Application Updater Block deployment framework.^[1]

^[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnpag2/html/updaterv2.asp (http://tinysells.com/43).

With Windows Forms 2.0, these technologies have evolved into ClickOnce deployment (a.k.a. ClickOnce), a comprehensive and secure deployment framework that's tightly integrated with Windows Forms 2.0 and VS05. ClickOnce marries the power of Windows Forms development with the simplicity of the web deployment model.^[2]

^[2] ClickOnce really works only when Internet Explorer is the default browser, so users with other browsers will likely have problems.