May
26Tucows and the clickable link
Tags : Ideaspad, links Posted in: Tech Talk
Forum Admin
I’ve recently submitted Ideaspad to Tucows and after several days (ten I think) I got a message saying my software had been rejected. This was quite a shock as I’ve not been rejected anywhere else! 
The reason being that I did not have a clickable link to the Framework download (when the ‘not present’ message appears).
As I’m working to a budget, I’m using the Setup project to create my installer. Although it does allow you to create a check for the framework (and MDAC) it doesn’t allow you to add a URL, as it’s just a text message.
For several days I’d been hunting around trying to find a technical solution, making postings in several places.
In the end I’ve had to just add a message saying ‘please see the ReadMe.html for help’.
This file then checks to see if the framework is installed and provide download links.
Has anyone else had similar problems or are you all using install shield?
motherswan
I am also using the .NET setup project to create the setup.exe. The last time I looked at Tucows they had unacceptable restrictions, so I didn’t submit. I have instructions and links for the framework on both my product information and download pages. Is any more information available from Tucows about how to satisfy their requirements?
Forum Admin
I don’t have a link to the Tucows requirements, but it’s somewhere in the author resource centre pages.
What do you find unacceptable?
motherswan
They’ve changed their website a lot, and now they reject the password they gave me. But from what I can remember, there was a something about the way the .NET application had to be installed that they couldn’t handle.
Forum Admin
Weird.
With the sites which take their time, I’m treating them with caution, just adding one product at a time.
I think that as I was initially rejected for something at the start of my installation, I MAY be in for more rejections.
I guess they would just have found a problem and stopped there.
I’ll let you (and this thread) know how I get on.
PS. When I was searching round on the newsgroups for answers, I did find a few people saying that they didn’t allow DotNet, then the guy emailed to complain and then got listed. Hopefully things will have improved.
Forum Admin
I have found another approach.
Use QSetup, it’s free and extremely flexible.
You don’t need the Windows Installer files (normally included in your distribution file).
You configure it to perform checks on the machine, I need show a Readme file, which has JavaScript, VBScript to tell the user whether they have the framework installed, MDAC.
I’ve also recently added a uninstall questionnaire, which brings up a web page on my site.
Ideaspad - An Award winning information manager for home and professional use
by JM
I had a similar problem needing to detect if the .NET framework was installed at that time I was using setup factory and had this check a value in the registry and if it did not exist the .NET Framework would install (if running from a CD) or if its a slim download install it would open a page to the MS Framework download page.
Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\
Are two folders normally which are the framework versions so checking that is a good starting point.
Another cool thing you can do is check the users browser agent so when they visit your webpage it could instantly tell them if they need to download the framework aswell.
http://www.pcjuice.com/dotnet/dotnet.asp
This only works for IE but im sure theres something similar for Firefox.
Aaron