You as a software programmer, has done everything possible to make your software as good as possible. Now you want to distribute your program. You cannot afford the installer of your software to be bugged or having problems.
The installer you choose will be the first experience of a user with your application. Now, just imagine what a person running your setup sees that it is bugged or has other problems. This makes the user have a bad outlook on the software. Slow or unsuccessful software installation are the most irritating computer problems. Having waited for some time for your software to download only to find the the setup is bugged is just maddening for anyone.
Therefore a quick and user-friendly software installer is the key for the success of your software. What are the other features a good installer should have? Well, to start with, an installer needs to place a small overhead (the size of the installer software) over your existing size of your software files. There are many installers available on the market which provide you with very small overheads.
You installer software need to be compatible with all major Windows versions. Just think how stupid that would be if you create a software which works on all Windows platform only to notice that your installer works only on Windows XP. This would limit your software audience and make you feel you have wasted effort in creating a software which works on all Windows platform.
Similar to the requirement of your installer to be able to work on all major Windows version, your setup should also be multilingual if your software is. What's the use of creating a multilingual software if your setup is in English only and the foreign-languaged user cannot go beyond the first page of your installer due to language barriers.
Another feature which is important in an installer software is its support for many compression formats. This will enable you to choose which format you want to use to compress your software files.
If you are creating a software which will update itself very often, you might want to make your installer check for new updates during the install and download them. This might be very useful in situation where your software is an anti-virus or any other sort of software. Your installer might also posses the ability to download patches and apply it to existing installation of your software.
Other things which your software installer should have might be self-contained executable installers. This means that all files are packed and made into an executable. This is useful for web distribution of your software. You might also want to add custom pages to your installer, letting users choose the components they want to install, having an installer integrity check, make huge sized installers, and more.
To conclude this article, I would like to advise you to really spend some time over choosing your software installer if you do not want to be disappointed with it. This will ensure the success of your software.
Hirvesh Marshall maintains a web page on FREE Free Setup Makers/Builders/Utilities (Application Deployment) (http://www.codefusionlab.co.cc/freesetupmakers.html) at Codefusion Lab. Codefusion Lab is a site dedicated to provide free and useful software to other persons. You can get more software at Codefusion Lab: Free PC Tools and Webmaster's Resource (http://www.codefusionlab.co.cc).
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