SETUP FACTORY

SETUP FACTORY

Easy to Use Software Installation Builder

Install Any File – Anywhere!
Setup Factory features an unbeatable development environment that puts you in total control of your files. Simply drag and drop your files and folders onto the project window and you’re ready to build. Setup Factory is smart enough to maintain your folder structure, automatically query version resource information, create shortcut icons and ensure 100% data integrity with fast and reliable cyclic redundancy checksumming. Of course, everything can be customized and overridden if you wish, but for most projects the easy to use Project Wizard can handle it all with just a few clicks.

Self-Contained, Single-File Setup.exe
Smaller and faster means a better experience for your customers and Setup Factory delivers. Compare our performance to the competition and see for yourself. With no “unpacking” step required, Setup Factory installers are quick to initialize and installation is lightning quick. What’s more, our Publishing Wizard walks you through the build process with a few easy steps. The single-file setup.exe is ready for distribution by web, email, USB drive, LAN, CD, DVD and even floppy disk (don’t laugh – some projects have that requirement!).


Project Wizard Quick-Start
Spend five minutes with Setup Factory’s easy to use Project Wizard and come away with a complete, ready to build installation project. You’ll be walked through each option so you can get your project started as quickly as possible.

NEW! LZMA2 Data Compression
With Setup Factory’s high performance LZMA2 data compression, you’ll see remarkably smaller installers as well as faster installation performance than ever before. Compared to previous versions, our test results show up to 300% better compression performance and up to 20% faster installation speed. You’ll be able to fit more data on each CD/DVD (that’s a potentially huge manufacturing cost savings) and reduce your bandwidth for Internet distributed installers (that saves both you and your customers time and money). Additionally, customers will notice that your installers finish faster – and that means happier customers!


NEW! Lightning Fast Setup.exe Generation – Increased Install Build Speed
Every second counts when it comes to development time. Significant improvements have been made to Setup Factory 9′s build process meaning that you’ll spend less time building and more time developing.

System Requirements Checking
You can easily enforce system requirements just by clicking a few boxes. Built-in checks include an extensive set of choices, including operating system, memory, screen resolution, color depth and administrator privileges. If the user’s system does not meet the minimum requirements you have chosen, the installer can either warn the user or abort the setup entirely.
Advanced Installer Features

NEW! Support for Files Larger Than 2GB
Are you distributing massive data files? Setup Factory is up to the challenge. While other installers may choke on files larger than 2GB in size, Setup Factory sails right on through. In fact, with our new LZMA2 data compression, you’ll also get dramatically better compression ratios and lightning fast installs.

Serial Number Checking, Data Security and Installer Expiration Features
Setup Factory includes a variety of features designed to help you manage access to your software, including serial number lists and date-based expiration. With its powerful serial number generator you can quickly create thousands of unique serial numbers, which are stored internally as secure MD5 hashes. Hidden from prying eyes, your installer data is compressed using proprietary algorithms and only accessible to those users who supply a valid serial number. Of course, if you’d rather do it yourself, Setup Factory is flexible enough to support your own custom validation and authorization schemes – including Internet based serial number validation or whatever system you prefer.

Installer Packages, Feature Categories and Installation Types
Creating installers for complex and multi-part products is now easier than ever. With dramatically improved support for grouping files into packages, it’s a snap to group products and features into a single installer. There’s even support for categories so you can group your packages into logical components. It’s the ultimate in flexibility for those large projects that need to support different installation types like typical, minimum, complete and custom.

Third Party Dependency Checking & Runtime Module Support
Instantly add runtime support for many popular third-party technologies, including .NET, Visual Basic, DCOM, JET, MDAC, Windows Installer, Visual C++ and more. Additional dependency modules are easy to create and integrate seamlessly into the development environment. Setup Factory gives you complete control over the detection and installation of each module, so you can easily adjust the behavior to suite your particular requirements.

International Language Support – Create Multilingual Installers Right Out of the Box
Setup Factory offers unsurpassed support for multilingual installations right out of the box. While some products charge you extra for this essential feature (or don’t offer it at all), Setup Factory gives you everything you need to support your customers and clients around the world. Installers created with Setup Factory can automatically determine the language of the client operating system and adjust the display of screens and messages appropriately. Whether you need to support English, French, German, Spanish, Italian or any other language recognized by Windows, with Setup Factory you simply provide the text and your installer takes care of the rest! A variety of pre-translated language modules are included right out of the box!

NEW! Easily Set File / Folder Permissions
A powerful new action named “File.SetPermissions” allows you to set the user access permissions of any file or folder on the user’s system. In the past this has been extremely difficult to do, but this essential task for Windows 7 software is now trivial thanks to Setup Factory.

NEW! Automatic Authenticode Signing
It’s never been faster or easier to codesign your installer executable. Authenticode signing is incredibly important for both Internet downloads and Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista compatibility. Simply point Setup Factory to your code signing certificate and private key files, give it the description information and it will automatically codesign your setup.exe during the build process.
Customize the Look of Your Software Installer


Installer Themes and Visual Skins
Choose from dozens of pre-made themes (skins) for your screens or even make your own. It’s as easy as viewing a live dialog preview and picking your favorite style. You can configure everything from fonts (face, color, size, style) and banner images to body/background graphics, control colors (buttons, check boxes, radio buttons) and more. Whether your installer needs a corporate feel or you prefer a more edgy style, you can do it with Setup Factory!

NEW! Integrated Support for MSSTYLES Visual Theming Skins
Setup Factory gives you the freedom to create setups that look exactly the way you want. Perhaps you prefer that your setups take on the same appearance as the operating system? Or perhaps you’d like to simply make use of the hundreds of fancy ready-to-use MSSTYLES themes that you can download on the Internet? In any case, Setup Factory makes it possible – and easy! It’s really amazing just how cool your installers can look thanks to this great new feature.

NEW! WYSIWYG Visual Dialog Editor – Create Your Own Install Wizard Screens
One of your most asked for features is finally here. You now have the freedom to create your own custom dialogs from scratch! Start off with an empty wizard dialog and then drop whatever controls you require onto it. Resize them, reposition them, call script code and much more. It’s fully featured and totally visual. When one of the built-in dialogs doesn’t get you where you want to go, the new visual dialog editor is sure to fit the bill.

NEW! Billboard Screen Control
The billboard control in Setup Factory allows you to incorporate billboards or static images on your custom screens and custom progress screens. Billboards can be used to show both single images, and image slideshows at any point in the setup, while installing or uninstalling files. It’s great for advertising features to your customers or providing useful tips while installing…


Background Window Options
Choose between the traditional setup-wizard style or the modern Windows Installer style interface. You can customize the background window with gradients, images, color washes, headlines and footer text with 3D effects. Now you can also select a custom taskbar icon, force the setup window to remain on top of other windows or even hide the taskbar icon completely for totally silent installs.

NEW! Custom Setup Icon and Version Resource Info -Brand Your Installer However You Like
You can now change the embedded setup.exe icon as well as the embedded version resource information (comments, product version, company name, product name, description, trademark, copyright etc.). While other installers force you to display their branding to your customers, Setup Factory gives you the freedom to brand your installer however you see fit.

Powerful Scripting Engine
Setup Factory incorporates an incredibly powerful free-form scripting engine. Based on the popular LUA language, this easy to understand scripting language features everything from for, repeat and while loops, to if/else conditions, functions, variables and tables (associative arrays). Paired with the built-in action library, full mathematical evaluation and Boolean expressions, there’s simply nothing you can’t achieve. Of course, we’ve also built in an Action Wizard and Code Wizard so even complete novices can create powerful installers that handle even the most demanding installation tasks.

Extensive Action Library
Setup Factory comes with a built-in library of 385+ easy to use actions, so you can do whatever you need without having to be an advanced programmer. There are actions to handle everything from text file editing to system registry changes. You can execute programs, call DLL functions, query drive information, manipulate strings, copy files, enumerate processes, start and stop services, interact with web scripts, display dialog boxes and much more.

NEW! Faster & More Powerful Lua 5.1 Installer Scripting Engine
Setup Factory 9′s scripting engine is now faster, more powerful and much more extensible. The Lua 5.1 system features incremental garbage collection, new mechanism for varargs, new syntax for long strings and comments, mod and length operators, metatables for all types and a fully reentrant parser. This all adds up to a more powerful installation development system for you, and a faster and more responsive software installation experience for your customers.


Color Syntax Highlighting Action Editor
If you’ve outgrown the Action Wizard interface or simply want to unleash the power of the fast and efficient scripting engine, we’ve got you covered. The Setup Factory freeform action editor features all of the professional features you’d expect. There’s color syntax highlighting, code completion, function highlighting, as-you-type action prototypes, Ctrl+Space function listings and even context-sensitive help. If you’re used to programming in Microsoft® Visual Basic, Microsoft® Visual C++ or any other modern development language, you’ll be right at home.

NEW! Stand Alone Script Editor
Setup Factory now includes the Indigo Rose Script Editor application. This new stand-alone program allows you to edit your installer scripts outside of the Setup Factory IDE. Includes support for syntax highlighting, intellisense code completion and help file integration. Simply run “IRScriptEditor.exe” from the Setup Factory program folder.

NEW! Extensive MSI Action Library
For when you want your Setup Factory “script” installer to interact with “MSI” installers like Indigo Rose’s MSI Factory (or other MSI installers like Installshield, Wise Installer or InstallAnywhere). These new actions leverage the Windows Installer service technology on the user’s system. They make it easy to query the state of products, features and components on the user’s system that were installed with a MSI Windows Installer package.

Expandable with Action Plugins
Setup Factory can be easily expanded with Action Plugins. These plugin modules can extend the product in infinitely powerful ways, such as adding support for databases, XML, data encryption and FTP file transfers. Tight integration with the design environment – including IntelliSense style code completion and syntax highlighting – makes them just as easy to use as built-in actions. Plugins are available through Indigo Rose as well as third-party developers thanks to Indigo Rose’s freely available plugin development kit.


NEW! Custom Error Handling Events
Sometimes things go wrong during install or uninstall. Perhaps the user doesn’t have the correct system requirements, or is missing a required application. With Setup Factory you can either let the installer handle it with intelligent defaults, or you can now trigger script code thanks to the new “On Install Error” and “On Uninstall Error” events. These events are fired when an error occurs during the setup or uninstall, allowing you to handle it in a custom way.

NEW! More Install Script Actions than Ever Before
Setup Factory now comes with 385+ high level functions (actions) for use in your installer scripts. That’s 25 more than v8 and 65+ more than in v7. We’ve built in some real goodies too, such as the new MSI action library.
Productivity and Team Workflow Features

Unattended Builds – Automate Your Installer Development
Setup Factory fits seamlessly into your daily build process. Creating your product installer every time you build your source code makes it easy to test early and often. Simply include your Setup Factory project in your build process to run automatically and output a finished setup.exe. Works with many leading build products right out of the box, including Visual Build and Automated Build Studio.


NEW! Enhanced Build Configurations
Building multiple installs from one Setup Factory project has become even easier in Setup Factory with the addition of Dependency Modules and Plugins to build configurations. This helps to make developing 32-bit and 64-bit installations within the same project file a breeze.

Silent Installs
Create silent installations that operate without displaying user interface dialogs, prompts, messages or errors. Easily read command defaults from a response file and control the installation automatically. Silent installs let you maintain control over hundreds or thousands of workstations while enforcing corporate standards. New options let you enable silent installs with a command line switch, or even force the installer to always run in unattended mode. Setup Factory installers automatically return command line status codes and can be easily called from batch files and automatic build processes.

NEW! Improved Add Files Dialog
We’ve improved the Add Files dialog on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 to give you the options that you would expect on those operating systems, including the search option and your favorite links. It all adds up to make it faster and easier to create your installer project, plus it’s more flexible for those complex projects.


NEW! Plays Well with Source Control
For those of you who prefer to keep your Setup Factory project files in a source control system, we’ve made it possible to turn off the recording of file time, statistical data, and version information inside the project file. This makes it much easier to add Setup Factory project files to source control and not trigger immaterial changes.

Built-in Spelling Checker
Now it’s easier than ever to make sure that typos don’t creep into your projects. Basically anywhere you can type, you can perform a spell check to ensure error-free text. Dictionaries are available for over a dozen languages including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Croatian, Czech, Polish and Slovenian.
100% Windows Compatibility – Both 32 Bit and 64 Bit!

NEW! Works with all Current Windows Versions
With Setup Factory 9.1, you can easily target both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows from one environment. While you might only be doing 32 bit Windows development right now, with Setup Factory, you’re ready for the future too. The fully self-contained setup.exe files created with Setup Factory 9.1 will work on all popular versions of Windows, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012 and is even certified compatible with Windows 8.

NEW! 64 Bit Windows
There is now a new global variable that returns the location of “_ProgramFilesFolder64″ as well as session variables for locating “%ProgramFilesFolder64%” and “%CommonFilesFolder64%.”

NEW! 100% Import of Setup Factory 7, 8 and 9 Projects
Upgrading to Setup Factory 9.1 is almost completely hassle-free. Simply open up your Setup Factory 7, 8 or 9 project files and continue development. See the ‘Changes to Setup Factory’ topic in the help file for information about minor changes that may be required for v7 and 8.
Comprehensive User’s Guide

We listened when you said you wanted more learning resources. The new user’s guide has been written from scratch to cover everything you need to know to create professional installers. You’ll learn everything from basics like working with files and customizing the user interface all the way up to lessons on mastering the scripting language and creating multilingual installers. It’s sure nice to have when you want to move beyond the wizards and get the most out of your software investment.

 

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