InstallShield 2012 Express Edition User Guide - Knowledge Base ...

Chapter 2: Getting Started
Converting or Importing Visual Studio Projects into InstallShield Projects
• Ability to export and reuse various project elements—Increase efficiency by moving pieces of an
existing project (dialogs, custom actions, or features) to a merge module or another installation
project.
• Multiple-instance support—Create an installation that lets end users install multiple instances of a
product on the same machine and in the same user context.
• Device driver support—Device driver support in the Premier and Professional editions simplifies the
process of installing device drivers from installation using the Driver Installation Frameworks for
Applications (DIFxApp) from Microsoft.
• ClickOnce support—The Premier and Professional editions include a ClickOnce Deployment project
type, which provides a lightweight application deployment mechanism that is easy to use. The new
ClickOnce Assistant guides you through the project creation process, providing pertinent
information along the way.
• Additional Dialog Themes—Several dialog themes are available only in the Premier and Professional
editions of InstallShield. The Express edition contains only two themes.
• Conversion of Visual Studio merge module projects—The Premier and Professional editions of
InstallShield let you convert a Visual Studio merge module project to an InstallShield merge module
project; this is necessary if you want to build a merge module for consumption in other projects.
• COM+ application proxy support—Manage COM+ application proxies during your installation. A
COM+ application proxy consists of a subset of the attributes of the server application, and it
enables remote access from a client machine to the machine where the application resides.
For additional details about the features that are included with each edition, contact InstallShield Sales,
or visit http://www.installshield.com.
Converting or Importing Visual Studio Projects
into InstallShield Projects
Visual Studio includes limited support for creating setup and merge module projects. InstallShield lets
you do the following so that you can use the advanced features and functionality in InstallShield to
create installations:
• Import a Visual Studio setup or merge module project (.vdproj) into an Express project (.ise).
During the import process, you can choose to import or ignore certain settings in the Visual Studio
project.
• Convert a Visual Studio setup project to an Express project.
The import and conversion functionality enables you to create InstallShield installation projects that
contain the same data and settings that were in your Visual Studio projects.
Note: If your Visual Studio project contains one or more project outputs, you can use InstallShield to import that Visual
Studio project into an InstallShield project; however, InstallShield cannot convert that Visual Studio project into an
InstallShield project.
104 ISE-1800-UG01 InstallShield 2012 Express Edition User Guide