Customer Reviews

Getting Started with InstallShield Developer and Windows Installer Setups

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Considering that writing complex installs is not a trivial task these days and that you won't find much documentation on this subject out there, I think this is a great book to have! It provides quite a lot of technical insight into how UI and execute sequences are run, what processes are involved, where execution of your install is taking place at any given time, etc. No dount the author "knows his stuff" very well.

The reason I'm giving it only three stars is because the author spends too much time dwelling on InstallShield's proprietary scripting language called InstallScript. The whole reason we purchased InstallShield Developer for Windows Installer in our company was to get rid of their proprietary language and leverage Microsoft's Windows Installer. Even though they state that InstallScript was derived from C++, it's a bizzare mix of C++, Basic and Pascal!

If you really need to use InstallScript you'd be better off with the latest and greatest InstalShield professional instead. Lengthy discussions of InstallScript make this book a total nuisance and turns it into a marketing tool altogether. If you want to leverage powerful WSH and write custom actions in VBScript/JScript you'll find no information at all. I wish InstallShield people realized that using the scripting framework of Windows is so much better than training people on a propritary language.

Bottom line---this is a very useful book and essential for install developers, but you'll have to skip a lot of sections looking for information that really matters to you. Three stars for failing to adequately cover Microsoft Windows Installer technology.

I thought this would help me learn how to use InstallShield Developer. I read it cover to cover and learned almost nothing of use. Areas where I really needed help, like doing patches and upgrades were mentioned, so you might be mislead into thinking there'd be something there. In fact, no useful information is provided about that, unless you don't know what a patch is. Ok, a patch is an incremental upgrade to an existing installation. Now you don't need to buy the book. (You can send the 50 bucks to me if you'd like).

It was a waste of my companies money and my time.

This book, while it does contain all the essientials of InstallShield Developer, lacks a complete index, making it extremely difficult to look up what you want to know about.

It also is a beginners books and has very little about how to create an upgrade package.

The Table Of Contents is a poor replacement for a complete index.

The author knows his stuff, but I was really disappointed with this book. I want to use the InstallShield IDE to quickly modify Microsoft Installer attributes.
The linkage between these two was poorly described. I also wanted to see more discussion of typical installation scenarios - multiple files installed in multiple locations depending upon existing applications (plug-ins, etc) instead of the standard Program Files folder for a single application. Also a discussion of tracking/updating revisions in the registry would have been useful.
I'd have liked to see more stress put on teaching the MS Installer and it's attributes. This book was tailored more toward the Standard InstallShield user. Many basic principles and quite a discussion about InstallScript.

Purchasing and reading this book proved to be a waste of time and money. If I were only interested in writing InstallShield setups, it would have had some value. As software distribution has been swinging over to Windows Installer, I purchased it with the hopes of finding something of value on that technology. I was very dissapointed to find nothing of value; only a brief introduction, and absolutely no hint of how to apply the technology to a real world situation. That was left to the reader to figure out. This one definitely will not stay on one of my shelves.