Question

Possible Duplicate:
Looking for recomendation to show release notes in ClickOnce applications

I’m using ClickOnce to deploy a .NET Winforms app, mainly for the ease of getting software updates automatically detected.

Currently when a new version is published, the user is notified there is an update available, BUT there is no mechanism to show them what’s actually included in this new update. Ideally I would like an easy way to hook this into my bug tracking system (we’re using Redmine).

Now I’m not committed to ClickOnce, so open to other alternatives that allow easy auto updates, but I would really like to let user’s know what sort of changes are included in new software updates, and possibly allow them to revisit this information in a Help \ What’s New menu.

Not related to .NET, but I’ve seen AdobeAir seems to do this well, and iTunes Apps also have a way of showing what’s changed before you upgrade, can ClickOnce or other .NET alternatives do this?

thanks!

Answer 1

The way I would handle this is to include an html page in the deployment; on this page, show the update information. Then when your app runs, check and see if the file is there, and if ApplicationDeployment.IsFirstRun is true, and if so, show the page. You could also just open the browser and show an online page (if they have internet access).

IsFirstRun is only true the first time a user runs the app after updating or installing a ClickOnce application. You also want to check IsNetworkDeployed before checking IsFirstRun; this checks to see if it is running as a ClickOnce application. If you check IsFirstRun and it’s not running as a C/O application, it will throw an exception.

     if (ApplicationDeployment.IsNetworkDeployed)
     {
        if (ApplicationDeployment.CurrentDeployment.IsFirstRun)
        {
           //Show the page if it exists
        }
     }