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From PocketPCinstaller.com
Product description: The easiest way to create a PDA and a Desktop installer for your PocketPC / Windows Mobile applications.
Requirements: A Windows 2000, 2003, Me or XP machine to create the installer files. A PocketPC 2002, Windows Mobile 2003 or 2005 device to run them.
Y'know, it's pretty amazing.
We drag ourselves to the office each day, write our beautiful looking .Net CF applications, and finally, when that big day arrives - the code is finished, the QA department has stopped hassling us about the number of outstanding bugs, and we're ready to turn it into an easy-to-deploy installation package.. errr... oh heck.
How little work can we put into this without having to talk every user through installing a set of .cab files onto their device, in a particular order ? Shall we just write a quick Word doc and leave it to our Support guys...?
It seems amazing that PocketPC development has been going on for this many years, yet there still isn't a de-facto way of bundling up our PocketPC .cab files into some kind of easy-to-deploy installer.
Well, I think it's about time to fill that gap.
The PocketPC Installer is unique. You run it on your PC, you drag'n'drop your .cab files (and any other data files) into it, and in return, it creates two standalone installer files for you, both of which contain compressed copies of your chosen PocketPC files within them:
- a PocketPC / Windows Mobile installer .exe
You can run this on your device - no other files are required - and it will intelligently install your .cab files onto your device. Stick it onto a memory card, and your users can install your .cab files simply by inserting the card into a device. The PDA installer file will begin installing automatically.
- a Desktop installer .exe
This .exe also contains compressed copies of all of your files, but this is an installer you run on your PC. It will look for a device connected via ActiveSync, copy the files' data to the device, then start installing them.
Two different ways of installing your PocketPC applications onto a device... you just have to choose which of the two .exe's is more suitable for you, and disregard the other.
Remember: most .cab files aren't compressed. That 2.5Mb "netcf.all.wce4.ARMV4.cab" file, which you need to ship with each of your Visual Studio 2003 applications actually compresses down to almost half it's size.
Simply running your files through the PocketPC Installer, not only do you end up with one installer file (as opposed to the collection of .cab files that you started with), but that one file is usually a lot smaller.
This makes them ideal downloads to put on your website. You simply need to specify one link, pointing at one file, and your users can download everything they need to install a set of .cab files/other files onto their device.
Let's start by having a look at each of the two installer .exe's that PocketPC Installer creates, then have a look at how easy it is to create them.
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