Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook

Deploy Your Application with ClickOnce

One of the driving forces behind the adoption of browser-based applications is the fact that organizations don't need to deploy their applications to the client. Most companies are willing to accept the limitations of HTML in order to avoid the considerable headaches of distributing application updates to hundreds or thousands of users.

Note

Want the functionality of a rich client application with the easy deployment of a web application? ClickOnce offers a new solution for deploying your software.

Deploying a .NET client application will never be as straightforward as updating a web site. However, .NET 2.0 includes a new technology called ClickOnce that simplifies deployment dramatically.

How do I do that?

ClickOnce includes a few remarkable features:

• ClickOnce can automatically create a setup program that you can distribute on a CD or launch over a network or through a web page. This setup program can install prerequisites and create the appropriate Start menu icons.

• ClickOnce can configure your application to check for updates automatically every time it starts (or periodically in the background). Depending on your preference, you can give the user the option of downloading and running the new updated version, or you can just install it by force.

• ClickOnce can configure your application to use an online-only mode. In this case, the user always runs the latest version of your application from a web page URL. However, the application itself is ...