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Overview of Setup Factory 8.2
January 31, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Setup Factory 8 is the result of over a decade of experience in creating software installation tools. Unlike other installer builders that require week-long training courses in order to get up to speed, Setup Factory was designed to be fast and easy to use. By pairing a visual layout of your software’s files and folders with a point-and-click interface, the entire process becomes completely logical and absolutely painless. What’s more, Setup Factory creates a compact, single-file setup.exe that runs on any version of Windows from 95 to Vista and is perfect for distribution by web download, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and LAN. Setup Factory 8.0 is simply a better way to make software installers. We guarantee it or you’ll get your money back.
- Rapid Installer Development. With Setup Factory 8, you simply drag and drop your files onto the project window, and click on the publish button. That’s it. It’s really that simple. You’ll be up and running in minutes. The Project Wizard can even walk you through it. Whether you want to create shortcut icons on the desktop and start menu, or configure an uninstaller in the control panel’s Add/Remove Programs panel, it’s all just a few clicks away. The same thing goes for adding in third-party runtime modules, with support for Visual Basic, .NET and more.
Powerful Enough For Any Installation Task. When you want the ultimate in power and flexibility, you can turn to the all-new scripting engine found in Setup Factory 8. This easy to understand language features everything from loops and conditions to functions, variables and arrays. It’s packed with hundreds of functions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, call DLL functions, manipulate strings, enumerate processes, interact with web scripts and much more. And thanks to the fill-in-the-blanks style Action Wizard, anybody can create powerful installers that handle complex installation tasks with ease.
- Fully Customizable. While other installer builders make you settle for the same old look, Setup Factory 8 includes an innovative visual theme system and full featured dialog editor. Choose from dozens of pre-made themes or even make your own. It’s as easy as viewing a live dialog preview and picking your favorite style. You can configure everything from fonts and banners to graphics, colors and much more. Whether you want your installers to look corporate, modern or artistic, you can do it with ease.
- Trusted and Reliable. We’ve been making software installation tools since the days of Windows 3.0. We’ve learned a lot over the years. That’s why you can count on Setup Factory to make sure your software installation process is as smooth and trouble-free as possible. In fact, there are hundreds of millions of our setup.exe files out there. That’s a lot of trust. And each one is proudly serving as a banner for its company’s reputation. It’s something we take very seriously. You can leverage our years of experience making rock-solid software installers by choosing Setup Factory 8.
Download the Free Trial and Get Started Now!
The best way to experience the value of Setup Factory is to try it. You can download the free trial version of Setup Factory by clicking here. The free trial version will continue to work for a period of 30 days, so you have plenty of time to build projects and see for yourself what a great tool it is. There is no other software in its class which is easier to use, or faster to work with!
Competitive Position
Many software installation tools have reached a point where they’ve become overly complicated. To some extent this is a reflection of the task at hand; it takes some very advanced features to get software installed safely on a modern system. Unfortunately, for many other tools “advanced” has come to mean “complicated.”
At Indigo Rose, we want to empower developers, not confuse them. Setup Factory has been designed and perfected over 15 years to make installation and deployment intuitive and straightforward. Like competing tools, it has a feature list full of advanced install abilities and technology. But what’s unique to Setup Factory is the way it presents all of these features. Unlike other tools, there are no hurdles in the way of just getting things done.
Everything from checking system requirements to creating multilingual translations is handled in a way that makes sense. All of the advanced features are there, from the innovative visual skinning system, to the high-performance scripting engine. But with Setup Factory, the basics are still easy, and building a normal installer is still a quick five minute, drag-and-drop affair. Even Setup Factory’s intelligent screen layout system keeps things simple. To make room for text, you don’t have to worry about positioning controls or moving things around; you just type it in, and it works.
The end-user experience is just as straightforward. Setup Factory is completely self-contained and does not require any preinstalled services. In fact, its setup executables are compatible all the way back to Windows 95 without any external dependencies – including MSI. It doesn’t take forever to extract, it doesn’t need to be bootstrapped with anything, it doesn’t depend on services which might be turned off, and it doesn’t leave behind any messy uninstallation problems.
For years we’ve been winning customers from other installation tools because of our strong user community and our refreshingly personal product support. Like Setup Factory, this is driven by a single, simple question: if we were our customers, how would we want it to work?
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Setup Factory Product Features
January 28, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Don’t be fooled by products costing twice as much – Setup Factory 8 has everything you need to make rock-solid professional software installers. It’s also easier to use and faster to work with. Setup Factory 8 features a quick-start project wizard, customizable dialogs, themes/skins, runtime modules, multilingual support, MD5 encoded serial numbers, single-file setup.exe for internet downloads, powerful scripting engine with 250+ functions, Authenticode support and much more.
Standard Features
Install Any File – Anywhere!
Setup Factory 8 features an unbeatable development environment that puts you in total control of your files. Simply drag and drop your files and folders onto the project window and you’re ready to build. Setup Factory is smart enough to maintain your folder structure, automatically query version resource information, create shortcut icons and ensure 100% data integrity with reliable CRC-32 checking. Of course, everything can be customized and overridden if you wish, but for most projects the improved Project Wizard can handle it all with just a few clicks.
Compact Single-File Setups
Smaller and faster means a better experience for your customers and Setup Factory 8 delivers. Compare our tiny ~450 KB runtime overhead (including uninstall) to the competition and see for yourself. Additionally, with no “unpacking” step required, Setup Factory 8 installers are also much faster to initialize and install than those created by competitive tools. What’s more, our Publishing Wizard walks you through the build process with a few easy steps. The single-file setup.exe is ready for distribution by web, email, LAN, CD, DVD and even floppy disk.
Project Wizard Quick-Start
Spend five minutes with Setup Factory’s easy to use Project Wizard and come away with a complete, ready to build installation project. You’ll be walked through each option so you can get your project started as quickly as possible.
Flexible Uninstaller
Setup Factory 8 features a new and improved uninstall feature. Simply turn it on and let Setup Factory worry about removing your files. Anything that is installed during the setup will be marked for removal by the uninstaller. However, if you want to go in and tinker with the settings, you’ll find that the uninstaller is now fully customizable. You can take full control of what files are removed, what shortcut icons are deleted, what registry changes are made and anything else you require. Even the dialog screens and sequence can be adjusted to suit your needs!
System Requirements Checking
You can easily enforce system requirements just by clicking a few boxes. Built-in checks include operating system, memory, screen resolution, color depth and administrator privileges. If the user’s system does not meet the minimum requirements you have chosen, the installer can either warn the user or abort the setup entirely.
Advanced Features
NEW! Support for Files Larger Than 2GB
Are you distributing massive data files? Setup Factory 8 is up to the challenge. While many installers will choke on files larger than 2GB in size, Setup Factory 8 sails right on through. In fact, with our new LZMA data compression, you’ll also get dramatically better compression ratios and lightning fast installs.
Serial Numbers, Security and Access Features
Setup Factory includes a variety of features designed to help you manage access to your software, including serial number lists and date-based expiration. With its powerful serial number generator you can quickly create thousands of unique serial numbers, which are stored internally as secure MD5 hashes. Hidden from prying eyes, your installer data is compressed using proprietary algorithms and only accessible to those users who supply a valid serial number. Of course, if you’d rather do it yourself, Setup Factory 8 is flexible enough to support your own custom validation and authorization schemes.
Packages, Categories and Install Types
Creating installers for complex and multi-part products is now easier than ever. With dramatically improved support for grouping files into packages, it’s a snap to group products and features into a single installer. There’s even support for categories so you can group your packages into logical components. It’s the ultimate in flexibility for those large projects that need to support different installation types like typical, minimum, complete and custom.
Dependency Modules & Runtime Support
Instantly add runtime support for many popular third-party technologies, including Visual Basic 5.0, Visual Basic 6.0, DCOM, JET, MDAC, Visual C++ and more. Additional dependency modules are easy to create and integrate seamlessly into the development environment. Setup Factory 8 gives you complete control over the detection and installation of each module, so you can easily adjust the behavior to suite your particular requirements.
NEW! Latest Technologies
In addition to the classic modules like Visual Basic 5.0/6.0, DCOM, JET and MDAC – Setup Factory 8.0 now includes easy-to-use runtime dependency modules for the newest and most popular technologies like .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, SQL Express 2005, Visual C++ 2008 and Windows Installer 3.1 v2.
International Language Support
Setup Factory 8 offers unsurpassed support for multilingual installations right out of the box. While some products charge you extra for this essential feature (or don’t offer it at all), Setup Factory 8 gives you everything you need to support your customers and clients around the world. Installers created with Setup Factory can automatically determine the language of the client operating system and adjust the display of screens and messages appropriately. Whether you need to support English, French, German, Spanish, Italian or any other language recognized by Windows, with Setup Factory 8.0 you simply provide the text and your installer takes care of the rest!
NEW! LZMA Data Compression
With Setup Factory 8’s new high performance LZMA data compression, you’ll see remarkably smaller installers as well as faster installation performance than ever before. Compared to Setup Factory 7, our test results show up to 300% better compression performance and up to 20% faster installation speed. You’ll be able to fit more on each CD/DVD (that’s a potentially huge manufacturing cost savings) and reduce your bandwidth for Internet distributed installers (that saves both you and your customers time and money). Additionally, customers will notice that your installers finish faster – and that means happier customers!
NEW! Automatic Authenticode Signing
It’s never been faster or easier to “codesign” your installer executable. Authenticode signing is incredibly important for both Internet downloads and Vista compatibility. Simply point Setup Factory 8 to your certificate and private key files, give it the description information and it will automatically sign your setup.exe during the build process.
Customize the Look of Your Installer
Install Wizard Screens
Over 20 pre-built layouts handle just about any task your installer could want, and it’s easy to adjust them to fit your needs exactly using the advanced dialog editor. There’s everything from check boxes, radio buttons and edit fields to popular screens like license agreements, serial number verification, shortcut folder selection and other advanced options. Each screen features a real-time preview so you can see the result of your changes as you work.
Themes and Skins
Choose from dozens of pre-made themes (skins) for your screens or even make your own. It’s as easy as viewing a live dialog preview and picking your favorite style. You can configure everything from fonts (face, color, size, style) and banner images to body/background graphics, control colors (buttons, check boxes, radio buttons) and more. Whether your installer needs a corporate feel or a hip attitude, you can do it with Setup Factory 8!
NEW! Visual Dialog Editor
One of your most asked for features is finally here. You now have the freedom to create your own custom dialogs from scratch! Start off with an empty wizard dialog and then drop whatever controls you require onto it. Resize them, reposition them, call script code and much more. It’s fully featured and totally visual. When one of the built-in dialogs doesn’t get you where you want to go, the new visual dialog editor is sure to fit the bill.
Background Window Options
Choose between the traditional setup-wizard style or the modern Windows Installer style interface. You can customize the background window with gradients, images, color washes, headlines and footer text with 3D effects. Now you can also select a custom taskbar icon, force the setup window to remain on top of other windows or even hide the taskbar icon completely for totally silent installs.
NEW! Custom Setup Icon and Version Resource Info
You can now change the embedded setup.exe icon as well as the embedded version resource information (comments, product version, company name, product name, description, trademark, copyright etc.). While other installers force you to display their branding to your customers, Setup Factory 8 gives you the freedom to brand your installer however you see fit.
Scripting System for 100% Flexibility
Powerful Scripting Engine
Setup Factory incorporates an incredibly powerful free-form scripting engine. Based on the popular LUA language, this easy to understand scripting language features everything from “for, repeat and while” loops, to “if/else” conditions, functions, variables and tables (associative arrays). Paired with the built-in action library, full mathematical evaluation and Boolean expressions, there’s simply nothing you can’t achieve. Of course, we’ve also built in an “Action Wizard” and “Code Wizard” so even complete novices can create powerful installers that handle even the most demanding installation tasks.
Extensive Action Library
Setup Factory comes with a built-in library of more than 360 easy to use actions, so you can do whatever you need without having to be an advanced programmer. There are actions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, call DLL functions, query drive information, manipulate strings, copy files, enumerate processes, start and stop services, interact with web scripts, display dialog boxes and much more.
Fill-in-the-Blanks Style Action Wizard
You don’t have to be a wizard to create powerful installers with Setup Factory 8. We’ve built the wizard into the software! Simply choose the action you want from a categorized list (complete with on-screen interactive help), fill in the requested information fields and the wizard does the rest. You don’t have to know anything about scripting or programming – just fill in the blanks and you’re done. Making changes is just as easy. Click on the line you want to change and press the “edit” button to go back to the original form. It’s really that easy.
Color Syntax Highlighting Action Editor
If you’ve outgrown the Action Wizard interface or simply want to unleash the power of the fast and efficient scripting engine, we’ve got you covered. The Setup Factory 8 freeform action editor features all of the professional features you’d expect. There’s color syntax highlighting, code completion, function highlighting, as-you-type action prototypes, Ctrl+Space function listings and even context-sensitive help. If you’re used to programming in Microsoft® Visual Basic, Microsoft® Visual C++ or any other modern development language, you’ll be right at home.
NEW! Stand Alone Script Editor
Setup Factory 8.0 now includes the Indigo Rose Script Editor application. This new stand-alone program allows you to edit your installer scripts outside of the Setup Factory 8 IDE. Includes support for syntax highlighting, intellisense code completion and help file integration. Simply run “IRScriptEditor.exe” from the Setup Factory 8 program folder.
NEW! Extensive MSI Action Library
For when you want your Setup Factory 8 “script” installer to interact with “MSI” installers like Indigo Rose’s MSI Factory. These new actions leverage the Windows Installer service technology on the user’s system. They make it easy to query the state of products, features and components on the user’s system that were installed with a MSI Windows Installer package.
Expandable with Action Plugins
Setup Factory 8 can be easily expanded with Action Plugins. These plugin modules can extend the product in infinitely powerful ways, such as adding support for databases, XML, data encryption and FTP file transfers. Tight integration with the design environment – including IntelliSense style code completion and syntax highlighting – makes them just as easy to use as built-in actions. Plugins are available through Indigo Rose as well as third-party developers thanks to Indigo Rose’s freely available plugin development kit.
NEW! Custom Error Handling Events
Sometimes things go wrong during install or uninstall. Perhaps the user doesn’t have the correct system requirements, or is missing a required application. With Setup Factory 8 you can either let the installer handle it with intelligent defaults, or you can now trigger script code thanks to the new “On Install Error” and “On Uninstall Error” events. These events are fired when an error occurs during the setup or uninstall, allowing you to handle it in a custom way.
NEW! More Script Actions than Ever
Setup Factory 8 now comes with over 360 high level functions (actions) for use in your installer scripts. That’s 40+ more than in v7.0. We’ve built in some real goodies too, such as the new MSI action library.
Productivity & Team Development
Built-in Spelling Checker
Now it’s easier than ever to make sure that typos don’t creep into your projects. Basically anywhere you can type, you can perform a spell check to ensure error-free text. Dictionaries are available for over a dozen languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Croatian, Czech, Polish and Slovenian.
Reports and Logs
Keeping track of the essential details of your installation project is now just a couple of clicks away. With improved HTML-based project reports (featuring CSS formatting) and text-based install-time log files, you’ll have an accurate record of everything you need. New options let you control the level of detail being logged, including options for recording errors and script actions.
Silent Installs
Create silent installations that operate without displaying user interface dialogs, prompts, messages or errors. Easily read command defaults from a response file and control the installation automatically. Silent installs let you maintain control over hundreds or thousands of workstations while enforcing corporate standards. New options let you enable silent installs with a command line switch, or even force the installer to always run in unattended mode. Setup Factory 8 installers automatically return command line status codes and can be easily called from batch files and automatic build processes.
Visual Basic Project Scanner
If you’re creating installers for your Visual Basic projects, then look no further! Setup Factory can analyze your VB project and automatically add the necessary runtime files and dependencies for you. There’s even an advanced executable scanner that can assist you in determining required DLL’s and libraries for those difficult to manage multi-team projects.
Unattended Builds
Setup Factory 8 fits seamlessly into your daily build process. Creating your product installer every time you build your source code makes it easy to test early and often. Simply include your Setup Factory project in your build process to run automatically and output a finished setup.exe.
NEW! Plays Well with Source Control
For those of you who prefer to keep your Setup Factory project files in a source control system, we’ve made it possible to turn off the recording of file time, statistical data, and version information inside the project file. This makes it much easier to add Setup Factory project files to source control and not trigger immaterial “changes.”
100% Compatible
Works with Windows 95 through Windows 7
While other installer tools are dropping support for older operating systems such as Windows 95 and 98, we believe that your choice of installation builder shouldn’t limit your potential market. Setups created with Setup Factory 8 work just fine on every Windows operating system from Windows 95 to Windows 7.
NEW! Updated for Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2003 and Server 2008
Build your installer with Setup Factory 8.2 and relax. We’ve included all of the latest OS detections, automatically populated built-in variables with the latest “popular” folder locations (e.g. CommonDocumentsFolder, MyMusicFolder, MyPicturesFolder, MyVideosFolder) and built-in the smarts so your installer will work on the newest operating systems as well as legacy systems all the way back to Windows 95. Ask the competition if they can do that…
NEW! 64 Bit Windows
There is now a new global variable that returns the location of “_ProgramFilesFolder64″ as well as session variables for locating “%ProgramFilesFolder64%” and “%CommonFilesFolder64%.”
Comprehensive User’s Guide
We listened when you said you wanted more learning resources. The new user’s guide has been written from scratch to cover everything you need to know to create professional installers. You’ll learn everything from basics like working with files and customizing the user interface all the way up to lessons on mastering the scripting language and creating multilingual installers. It’s sure nice to have when you want to move beyond the wizards and get the most out of your software investment.
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Video Tutorials for Setup Factory
January 8, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Learn all about Setup Factory. These videos were created for Setup Factory 7.0, but are fully compatible with Setup Factory 8.
