Deploying Smart Client Applications with ClickOnce
Rob Windsor, G6 Consulting
For several years now, organizations have chosen web applications
over windows applications when building their internal systems.
This choice has been made for one main reason; web applications are
much easier to deploy than their windows counterparts. The disparity
is so large that these organizations are willing to sacrifice the
rich, interactive, and highly productive user experience that windows
applications provide just to avoid the headaches in deploying and updating
them.
With this issue in mind, Microsoft has added a new deployment technology to
Visual Studio 2005. This technology, called ClickOnce, allows Windows Forms
applications to be deployed as easily as web applications. The developer copies
the updated application to a folder on a web server and the next time the user
runs the application the updates are automatically downloaded and applied.
This session will introduce ClickOnce, discuss the basic architecture, and demonstrate
how to deploy rich Windows Forms applications over the intranet or internet.