The Official InstallShield for Windows Installer Developer's Guide (Professional Mindware)

If you want to get your software officially blessed as Windows-compatible, you have to endow it with an automated installation routine. If your software is for Microsoft Windows 2000, you have to use the Windows Installer service. The Official InstallShield for Windows Installer Developer's Guide is the best available treatment of the subject, and it's empirically quite good.

Author Bob Baker first walks readers through the installation-routine creation process the hard way--that is, with the Orca tool that ships with the Windows Installer Software Development Kit (SDK). He then delves much more deeply into the widely used InstallShield for Windows Installer (ISWI) product from InstallShield Software, at which company Baker works as an instructor. A demonstration copy of ISWI 1.52 (as well as the Windows Installer SDK) appears on this book's companion CD-ROM.

The Official InstallShield touches on several instructional techniques as it reveals aspects of the Windows Installer Service and of ISWI. Some of Baker's work is simple documentation of the ISWI user interface; other chapters are language documentation for InstallScript and its Component Object Model (COM) links.

The eclectic style of the book fits the subject, which is multifaceted and capable of dealing (almost by definition) with diverse configurations. Baker's careful, one-at-a-time exploration of features will help developers untangle problems they encounter. It's far better than the Windows Installer SDK documentation, no question about it. --David Wall

Topics covered: The Windows Installer Service and the process of creating installation wizards for programs that run on Microsoft Windows 2000, primarily with InstallShield Software's InstallShield for Windows Installer (ISWI). After covering Windows 2000's architecture for deploying software, this book documents the ISWI user interface and the essentials of its use. Custom actions, user interfaces, scripting, shared components, software patching, and localization are covered in turn.