Deploying Internet Explorer add-ons.
Create setup projects for IE7 and IE6 - C#, VB.NET.

Add-in Express Home > Add-in Express for Internet Explorer > Online Guide > IE add-on deployment

Deploying Internet Explorer add-on

To make your IE 7 and IE 6 solution deployment as fast and easy as it could possibly be, all Internet Explorer add-on solutions based on Add-in Express include setup projects with all necessary prerequisites and advanced actions that you can use to customize the installation process.

Shims

Internet Explorer is unmanaged while an Add-in Express based add-on is a managed class library. Therefore, there must be some software located between Internet Explorer and your IE add-on. The main task of the software is to follow the rules for IE add-ons and, at appropriate moment, to load the .NET Framework and to start your add-on. If there is no such software – a shim - IE will never load your add-on. Besides, the shim should be able to isolate your add-on in a separate application domain.

When you install your add-on, the registry settings for the add-on will point to the shim. And the shim will be the first DLL examined by IE when it runs your add-on.

Add-in Express Loader

All Add-in Express based IE add-ons are supplied with a special pre-compiled shim, Add-in Express Loader. The loader (adxloader.dll) is designed to fulfill the following basic tasks: it loads the .NET Framework, creates a unique AppDomain for the add-on, and loads the add-on to the AppDomain. Advanced options are available for the developer by the manifest file that may resemble the following one:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <assemblyIdentity name="MyAddin14, PublicKeyToken=f9f39773da5c568a" />
  <loaderSettings generateLogFile="true" shadowCopyEnabled="true"
  privileges="user" />
</configuration>

The loader allows generating the log file containing useful information about errors on the add-n loading stage. The log file is located here: My Documents\Add-in Express\adxloader.log. Also, you can disable the Shadow Copy feature of the Add-in Express Loader, which is enabled by default (see IE tips: Deploying – shadow copy). The privileges attribute accepts the "user" string indicating that the Add-in Express based setup projects can be run with non-administrator privileges. Nevertheless, the current version requires using the "administrator" string for this attribute.
When an Add-in Express based project is being built, the loader files are copied from the Loader folder of your project to the project's output directory.

Setup projects

The project wizard creates a setup project automatically.

Creating a setup project manually

We don't recommend that you create setup project manually because you can always create them with the Add-in Express Project Wizard when starting a new project. Nevertheless, if you need to create a setup project manually, use the following step-by-step instructions.

Add a new setup project

Right-click the solution item and choose Add | New Project.

In the Add New Project dialog, select the Setup Project item and click OK. This will add the setup project to your solution.

File System Editor

Right-click the setup project item (Setup1 in the screenshot) and choose View | File System.

Primary Output

Right-click the Application Folder item and choose Add | Project Output

In the Add Project Output Group dialog, select the Primary Output Item of your add-on project and click OK.

This adds the following entries to the Application Folder of your setup project.

Select AddinExpress.IE.tlb and, in the Properties window, set the Exclude property to True. Also, exclude the ieframe.dll file in the same way.

Note! Exclude all TLBs and OLBs. Always exclude all TLB and OLB files from the setup project except for TLBs that you create yourself.

Project-dependent resources

Now you add all resources (e.g. assemblies, DLLs or any resources) required for your project.

Add-in Express Loader and its manifest

Add the adxloader.dll and adxloader.dll.manifest files from the ‘Loader’ subfolder of the add-in project directory to the ‘Application Folder’ of the setup project.

Custom actions

Add the adxregext.exe file from the Redistributables folder of the Add-in Express install folder to ‘Application Folder’ of the setup project.

Open the Custom Actions editor and add a new action to the Install, Rollback, Uninstall sections. Use the adxregext.exe file as an item for the custom actions.

Add the following values to the Arguments properties of the following custom actions:

• Install
/install="[TARGETDIR]\MyIEAddon1.dll" /privileges=admin
• Rollback
/uninstall="[TARGETDIR]\MyIEAddon1.dll" /privileges=admin
• Uninstall
/uninstall="[TARGETDIR]\MyIEAddon1.dll" /privileges=admin
Please replace "MyIEAddon1.dll" with the file name of your add-on.

Dependencies

Right click on the Detected Dependencies section of the setup project and choose the Refresh Dependencies option. Also, exclude all dependencies that are not required for your setup.

Prerequisites

Right click on the setup project and open the Properties dialog.

Click on the Prerequisites button and, in the Prerequisites dialog, check all prerequisites you need. 

You can choose the ‘Download prerequisites from the same location as my application’ option to distribute all prerequisites with the add-in installation package.

Deploy

Rebuild the setup project. Copy all setup files to the target PC and run the msi file to install the add-in. However, to install Prerequisites, you will need to run setup.exe.

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