The first impression matters. You know it. If a potential customer downloads the trail version of your software, and has a bad experience trying to install it, that’s another lost sale. And if a customer already put her money down, a difficult setup will be a burden for your tech support department.
DeployMaster was designed to give your (potential) customers a good first impression. Installing software will never be fun, but DeployMaster makes it a snap. It does not ask difficult questions to novices and gives advanced computer users the power they like.
In this guided tour I will show you the setup process for EditPad Lite, packaged with DeployMaster. You can download EditPad Lite if you want to try the real thing. The real installer lacks a few things like the identity screen that are shown here for completeness, but not actually needed for EditPad Lite.
You can walk through the tour by clicking the buttons on the screen shots.
The welcome screen above shows up immediately after the user launches a setup program built with DeployMaster. Unlike many other installers, setups created with DeployMaster do not being with a lengthy extraction or validation process. DeployMaster setups pop up instantly.
The welcome screen shows up without the typical security prompt that makes the screen go black. Administrator privileges are not needed to show a welcome screen, so DeployMaster does not request them at this point. This allows the user to confirm he’s running the right installer without giving it free reign of his PC. If the security prompt appears immediately, the user may click No and forget about your product.
Instead, the installer will request administrator privileges when the user clicks one of the buttons to commence installation and the chosen installation method requires administrator privileges. Installations for all users always require administrator privileges. Installations for the current user may or may not require administrator privileges. This is configured on the Project page. On Windows Vista and later, buttons that start an installation with administrator privileges show a little shield icon to indicate that the usual black screen security prompt will follow. If the user clicks Continue on the security prompt, the installer will proceed. If the user clicks No, the installer stays at the Welcome screen.
The welcome shows up to five buttons. When the mouse pointer is on top of one of them, a description of what the button does will be shown at the right.
Immediate Installation installs the application without asking any technical questions. This is ideal for inexperienced computer users. If the installer allows all-user and user-specific installations then it defaults to installing for all users if the user has administrator rights or their accounts supports elevation. It falls back to a user-specific installation if the user’s account does not support elevation.
More Information shows the readme file. This button only appears if a readme file was specified on the Project page while building the installer.
Custom Installation allows the user to choose what will be installed and what not. No other technical questions are asked. The installation will proceed immediately after selecting the components. This button only appears if some components were marked as user-selectable on the Files page while building the installer.
Create Portable Installation appears instead of Custom Installation button if the application can be installed in a portable manner. It will install the software on a removable medium without making any changes to the host computer. This means that only files will be copied. No shortcut icons, file associations, etc. will be created. Portable installations never require administrator privileges. Thus the Create Portable Installation button never shows a shield icon on Windows Vista and later and never results in a black screen security prompt.
Advanced Installation installs the application asking the user for the installation folder and which file types are allowed to be registered. The component selection which will show more detail, which is ideal for experienced computer users. If the installer allows all-user and user-specific installs then the user is given the choice on the next screen. This button can be removed via the Appearance page while building the installer.
Do Not Install terminates the setup straight away.