An advertised shortcut is one which actually invokes Windows Installer when
activated. If the product feature that the shortcut points to is not
installed at that point, Windows Installer will install it, then invoke the
feature. This is how the 'install on demand' and 'advertised product'
features work.
If you've never worked on a Windows domain, I should say that it's possible
to configure products in Active Directory Group Policy so that the shortcuts
appear on a user's start menu (or elsewhere), but the product itself is not
installed until the user clicks one of these shortcuts. This is referred to
as an advertised product.
The <RemoveFolder> required by the ICE error is there to tidy up folders
containing advertised shortcuts when an advertised product is removed from
Group Policy by an administrator. I think. This isn't too clear.
There are many entry points that can be advertised, such as ProgIDs,
Extensions, TypeLibs and COM classes. However, it's generally not
recommended to advertise COM classes or type libraries, though, as this can
have a surprising effect for the end user (see Rob's blog at
http://robmensching.com/blog/archive/2007/03/12/RobMens-Recommendation-Do-no
t-advertise-COM-information-in-MSI.aspx)
The target of an advertised shortcut is the key file of the component it
belongs to. If your component has multiple files, you may need to specify
the @KeyPath attribute on the file you want the shortcut to launch. Best
practice is one file per component.
ALLUSERS=1 creates a per-machine, not per-user, install. This means that
instead of placing shortcuts in the installing user's start menu, it places
them in \Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu. This means they appear
for all users. However, in a shared-computer (hot-desking) scenario, an
administrator might want to only advertise the product to some users and not
others; your install should ideally work in this scenario and therefore
support per-user installs. The validation does not process ALLUSERS=1.
The WiX tutorial at http://www.tramontana.co.hu/wix/ has working shortcuts,
but they're not advertised. The syntax is currently correct for WiX 2.0 but
wixcop should be able to translate it.
--
Mike Dimmick
-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users-***@lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:wix-users-***@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of DE
Sent: 15 March 2007 23:56
To: wix-***@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [WiX-users] How to create folders and shortcuts in the Start
Menu? (Wix 3.0)
I'd just like to ask some questions relating to this area, because I cannot
find much meaningful documentation about it.
All we want to do is create shortcuts to some of the files we are
installaing. We are using the latest Votive. Assume we are happy to install
to all users.
1) What exactly does it mean to "advertise" a short cut?
2) Using "advertised shortcuts" and the <RemoveFolder> tip you made earlier,
we have managed to create a shortcut that is visible within a sub directory
of Start Menu. But it doesn't actually link correctly; on inspection the
target name is set to the name of the product. Why is this?
3) Should I set ALLUSERS = 1 as well? How does it manifest? Would it effect
the previous point?