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I am impressed with "ClickOnce" deployment in Whidbey. It contains much more than I would have initially thought.

ClickOnce basically works like this: You develop a WinForms application in Whidbey and "deploy" it to a web server for installation using "ClickOnce". A user that downloads the app from the web server now gets the option to install / cache the app on his system. If special security-settings are required, the installation procedure will say so - otherwise, the application is automatically copied to the PC, registered in "Add/Remove Programs" (where the two latest versions are cached for rollback) and an icon is created in the start-menu.

The most interesting parts are the possibilities to register prerequisites, that get installed with the application, the option to set how often the app should check for updates online and the bootstrapper that allows for all prerequisites like the .NET Framework or for example the DirectX 9 managed providers to be automatically installed if required (including reboot of the system, if necessary). The configuration-options during the development of ClickOnce applications are really rich, including a tool that calculates the minimum required security-settings, a given application requires.

Whow.