The last couple Emplode releases have been in a self-extracting WinZip format.
Nifty, but there's one problem: It only unzips the files. It doesn't install the software and delete the files for you when it's done. This means I have to go hand-delete the files when it's done installing. This is no different than when they used to be just "zipped", but...
Install Shield (and, now that I think about it, WinZip Self-extractor, too) has a way to create self-installing EXE's. In Install Shield, this feature is called "Package for the Web". It's just the existing self-extractor engine with a little extra code to automatically run "setup.exe", wait until it's done, then delete the files it extracted. I should know because that's one of the things I do at my job: create these kinds of installers. It's reasonably easy to do (although it requires that you add one small step to your distribution procedure), and makes your end-users love you.
Not that there's anything wrong with the current distribution, it's just that if you're going to make it a self-extractor, why not go all the way and make it a self-installer with automatic cleanup, too? I'm pretty sure that since you use Install Shield and WZSE already, you most likely have the tools to do it sitting on your hard drive. Just waiting. Whispering "use me, use me, use me"...
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Tony Fabris
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