Auto update dialog / Notification for WPF Application - wpf

I want a automatic update notification in my application. A message box should appear which tells that an update is available, if user wants then it can download the latest version in downloads folder of windows. Nothing else (user will install it manually) not application.
-I'm using Installshield so no Click once solution.
Thanks

If you want an out-of-the-box solution to this problem you're likely to be disappointed. I haven't found anything that works except ClickOnce, and I dislike it. I did find this:
http://windowsclient.net/articles/appupdater.aspx
My solution was to roll my own. It's actually not that difficult. I wrote a small bootstrapper application that first checks for updates, downloads them if necessary, and then launches my application in a new AppDomain. Pretty easy.
If you want to check for updates while your app is running, you need to write and add a component/class to your project that performs that task, and informs the user (MessageBox or whatever) that an update is available. If they choose to perform the update then you need to launch your bootstrapper (so it can fetch the updates) and kill your current process.
All of this is very possible with a little time and some custom code. It's not as difficult as it sounds. The biggest thing is determining how configurable you want your custom solution to be because that can affect when/where your bootstrapper goes to look for updates (I built mine to look for updates on a network share).

http://autoupdatewpf.codeplex.com/
i found one. This one is quite simple and solve the purpose.

Related

Show windows form over locked screen

I'm developing an application to run in background. This application is used to capture user’s activity on their system. Application is working very fine.
Now, I need to display a windows form over locked screen. Just like this:
Can any one help me! How can I show any windows form over locked screen?
Not possible, for security reasons no application should be shown when the screen is locked.
The only thing remotely similiar might be a Kiosk App:
Is the Windows.ApplicationModel.LockScreen namespace available for non-kiosk use?
There are a few different things here that are probably confusing things. unfortunately they are not very common scenarios so documentation is lacking.
You can use the Windows.ApplicationModel.LockScreen namespace for customising the display of the lock screen. This can be used to change the wallpaper or notification counts. It is probably the most common form of lock screen customization as it can be done by any app.
You can also use the functionality in this namespace to create an alternative lock screen. This could have different behaviour to the process of swipe up and enter password/PIN or Microsoft Hello face detection.
Creating such an app and distributing through the store requires extra permissions than 3rd party developers typically have.
"Kiosk mode" apps are created as apps that run above the lock screen. Such apps have no real connection to lock screen replacements but are related in their use of similar underlying elements of the OS.
In terms of what you are trying to achieve, it sounds like you should be able to do this by declaring the windows.lockScreen extension and then using LockApplicationHost to do the actual unlocking. As mentioned above the lack of a way for 3rd parties to distribute such apps through the store means there is a lack of documentation in this area but it should be possible.
One thing to take note of in such an app is an under even greater memory/resource constraints than a typical app and so you should keep this in mind during your planning and development.
I know this is an old question but for anyone still looking:
It is a security risk don't do it.
If you still want to do it this could help: SampleHardwareEventCredentialprovider
You will have to play with WinAPI and CredentialProviders but it is working demo and will show simple windows dialog with a button at lockscreen

Indesign real-time package for collaboration

I manage a team of designers working on Indesign.
When we work on a project, it often happens that a designer has to work on the project of another. We work with Dropbox for Business.
But when we take the work of another designer, there is often missing links and fonts.
Is there a plugin or a way to develop a plugin that would allow, when we create a new indd file (or for the protection of the same file):
Automatically create a "Links" folder and another "Document fonts" at side of the indd file
Systematically add a new link or new typography in the corresponding folder?
To simplify: each action on font or on a link, make a kind of "Indesign Package" in real time?
If this is not a solution, do you have any solutions to meet this need?
I don't know of a specific script or plugin that does this.
However, it should be possible to write a script with an eventhandler with a beforeClose event that runs certain script commands every time a user closes a document (or even every time a user adds, changes or deletes a link). At this point the script could run some copyLink commands on all the images and fonts (?) placing them all in the folders next to the document.
The whole script could be made a startup script, so it becomes active anytime any user runs InDesign.
(I'm actually not sure, if fonts can be copied so easily. Worst case scenario would be that the script would need to run some packaging command to gather the fonts somewhere, copy them over to where you need them and then delete the rest of the temporary package.)
Did you consider Creative Cloud Libraries ? They are meant to allow sharing assets within a team. Apart form that, you users would need to have a same access to the file system (a common drive letter for the network path for example).
Another solution would be to use a DAM solution so users would link files from the DAM.
Eventually, you could sure think of a script as mdomino offered.

under what circumstances (if any) can I continue to run "out of date" GWT clients when I update my GAEJ version?

following on from this question:
GWT detect GAE version changes and reload
I would like to further clarify some things.
I have an enterprise app (GWT 2.4 & GAEJ 1.6.4 - using GWT-RPC) that my users typically run all day in their browsers, indeed some don't bother refreshing the browser from day to day. I make new releases on a pretty regular basis, so am trying to streamline the process for minimal impact to my users. - Not all releases concern all users, so I'd like to minimize the number of restarts.
I was hoping it might be possible to do the following. Categorize my releases as follows:
1) releases that will cause an IncompatibleRemoteServiceException to be thrown
and 2) those that don't : i.e. only affect the server, or client but not the RPC interface.
Then I could make lots of changes to the client and server without affecting the interface between the two. As long as I don't make a modification to the RPC interface, presumably I can change server code and or client code and the exception won't be thrown? Right? or will any redeployment of GAE cause an old client to get an IncompatibleRemoteServiceException ?
If I was able to do that I could batch up interface busting changes into fairly infrequent releases and notify my users a restart will be required.
many thanks for any help.
I needed an answer pretty quick so I thought I'd just do some good old fashioned testing to see what's possible. Hopefully this will be useful for others with production systems using GWT-RPC.
Goal is to be able to release updates / fixes without requiring all connected browsers to refresh. Turns out there is quite a lot you can do.
So, after my testing, here's what you can and can't do:
no problem
add a new call to a RemoteService
just update some code on the server e.g. simple bug fix, redeploy
just update some client (GWT) code and redeploy (of course anyone wanting new client functionality will have to refresh browser, but others are unaffected)
limited problems
add a parameter to an existing RemoteService method - this one is interesting, that particular call will throw "IncompatibleRemoteServiceException" (of course) but all others calls to the same Remote Service or other Remote Services (Impl's) are unaffected.
Add a new type (as a parameter) to any method within a RemoteService - this is the most interesting one, and is what led me to do this testing. It will render that whole RemoteService out of date for existing clients with IncompatibleRemoteServiceException. However you can still use other RemoteServices. - I need to do some more testing here to fully understand or perhaps someone else knows more?
so if you know what you're doing you can do quite a lot without having to bother your users with refreshes or release announcements.

Best practice for updating silverlight deployment that is actively being used

I am currently running a SL3 project where we are in a highly iterative development mode with about 25 active test customers. I am making small changes at a clip of about 4 new builds per day. It is important to know this application is mission critical line of business for these 25 people, it is the tool they use all day to do their work so they are using it constantly and often launch their browser and the app in the morning and never close it until the end of the day.
The challenge is that when I make an update to the application I have no clean way to notify the users, in most cases this is ok as it is rare that I introduce a data contract change or something that would be a classic 'breaking' change to the app/service. Users keep plugging along and will get the change next time they refresh.
Right now we have resorted to emailing everyone and telling them to force refresh or close the browser and log back in.
Surely there is a better way...
Right now my train of thought is to have a method on the server that compares client xap versions and determines if the client being used is the most up to date, if so I will notify the user and make them update.
What have you done to solve this problem?
One way of doing it is to use a push mechanism (I used Kaazing Websoocket Gateway but any would do). When a new version of the XAP is released a message (either manually entered into the system by admin or automated triggered by XAP file change event) would be sent to all the clients. In the simplest scenario some notification would be shown to a user (telling him that a new version is released and the application needs to refresh) and then the app would refresh (by simply reloading the page) saving user's state if necessary.
If I would do this I would just keep it simple. A configuration value in web.config and a corresponding service method that simply returns that value (the value itself could be anything, but a counter is probably wise). Then you could have your Silverlight app poll that service method at regular intervals. Whenever the value changes (which you would do manually when you deploy a new version), just pop up a dialog telling the user to refresh the browser or log in/out. This way you don't have to force them to refresh every time. If you go with the idea of comparing xap file versions they will always be required to refresh, even for non-breaking changes.
If you want to take it further you could come up with some sort of mechanism to distinguish between different severity levels. For instance, if the new config value would contain the string "update_forced", you could force the users to reload the app by logging them out automatically (a little harsh, perhaps). If it contains the string "update_recommended", just show a little icon at the top right corner saying that there is a new version and that they should upgrade in their own time.
Granted, this was targeted at Silverlight 3, but with the PollingDuplex client and such in the newer versions of Silverlight, you could publish an "Update Now" bit to the clients, and build a mechanism in the client to alert the user that there is an update that is now out... that they should update it shortly, etc. You may even be able, through serialization and such, to save the state that they are in when they close the app to reload it.
We've done stuff similar with a LOB app that we built, so that as users are changing things, the rest of the userbase sees those changes immediately. Next up will be putting the flags in to change authorization and upgrades "on the fly" if you will.

Using Visual Studio to create a more complex setup project

I need to learn more about creating setup projects from within Visual Studio to support the following scenario:
When the user starts the setup, he needs to choose between the parts that he wants to set up. The setup should offer to install three web services, one web site and maybe even run some SQL scripts to install/update the database.
During installation, the user will need to tell where he wants the sites/services to be installed within IIS. He also needs to specify the database connection which is used within the services/sites and to update the database. And there will probably be a few other wishes too. It should also support an uninstall of the site and services, but the database can continue to exist.
Is this even possible with the Setup projects that Visual Studio creates? If not, no worries. I don't need an alternative solution! I just need to know if this is possible before trying myself and discovering it's not possible after weeks of trying... This is for an internal project and I want to make life easier for the administrators who need to install/upgrade these sites/ services every time when there's an update. (About once every two weeks.)
Stay well away from vdproj stuff and move to WiX ASAP (As you'll see me being advised in questions I asked here). For a start, flexibility around where to put the IIS apps is seriously limited (you get one virtual dir and the user can only choose the name, you cant have multiple instances).
The other side of this is of course that the vdproj stuff is an 80% solution. Ultimately you can add as many custom steps as you like, and they can pop up dialogs and whatever they like. There's no reason why a custom step cant do all the things you want.
I just know that I once thought like you, and looking back wish someone had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said, just use the proper stuff - even if it seems a little harder initially. There is a conversion tool that will suck in your vdproj and spit you out a WiX.
By all means, try wizarding up what you need and seeing if it works - most of the stuff is pretty searchable - just know when to call it quits.

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