Our main goal in this project is to make software distribution as simple and effective as we can. Ideally it shall be completely invisible for the Authors and their Clients. Or at least it shall be a fun.
We want to save the creative energy of our Authors and their Clients for the things they like doing most. We hope that would make our world a somewhat better place.
Our development plans are based on the requests of our users. Let us use the moment and invite you again to let us know what new features do you need or what shall be improved in our product.
64-bit variations of special Windows folders, such as Program Files, Common Files and SysWoW64, are made available for selection as a target for installation roots. If the package uses such targets then the installer will not set it up on 32-bit Windows.
You can now easily register and un-register OLE controls such as DLL or ActiveX Controls (OCX) files that are self-registerable via the RegSvr32 tool.
It is made possible to create subfolders of shortcuts folder at Start Menu \ Programs of the target system.
It made possible to set up custom icons for the file associations that will be registered for your product. These icons will be displayed in Windows Explorer for files with specified extensions instead of the application icon which is the default.
If your screen is too small for the Packager window (1020 õ 670 pixels), it will now automatically expose appropriate scrollbars to make it possible to work on, say, netbooks.
The uninstaller now supports two new parameters which help to wait for the uninstallation completion and to check if it was successful.
The non-commercial and evaluation edition of the Excelsior Delivery now provides fully functional means to customize images used in the installer dialogs. Now there is only one restriction of the evaluation edition, besides the license terms: the text "Excelsior Delivery" in installer dialog window title may not be removed.
The Packager is now able to check Excelsior site for updates of the product you use. The check is performed once a month by default. You may choose the option to perform only manual update checks.
It is made possible to install application files to any number of folders in addition to the main installation root.
It is made possible to set up default locations for installation folders of your application in any of standard Windows locations, like Windows, Desktop, Application Data, My Documents etc.
If there are files in your package that are used during the installation only, you may now put them to a special temporary folder of the package. The installer removes such files after the installation is completed and they will not waste you user's disk.
Icons used in the package now can be extracted from any EXE or DLL file, so it is not necessary to put them into the package as separate *.ico files.
Brazilian localization is added to existing eight installation languages.
Any additional installation folder, but not the main one, now may be left alive after the application is uninstalled, for example to keep user's data files or shared components.
In case the uninstallation is unwanted for some reason, or trivial, the new feature allows you to create a package without uninstaller. All your user will get are your files and shortcuts and not a single bit of the installer footprint.
Since v1.8 our installation products can produce all scripts that are necessary to build your installer with NSIS. You may also run NSIS compiler from within the Packager, so it is possible to use it as GUI wizard for NSIS, but such use was not our main goal. In the design of Excelsior Installer, we valued ease-of-use over feature set and flexibility. Should your needs extend beyond the capabilities of our product in the future, you will be able to switch over to a more powerful installation platform with ease. We hate vendors lock-ins just as you do.
Integration with Windows Explorer makes it possible to create installation package in just two mouse clicks:
An installation package is now supplied with MD5 hash. The installer checks the package against that hash and stops installation if the package has been changed.
Excelsior Installer is now able to add shortcuts to Windows Quick Launch toolbar.
By default, files and folders with the hidden attribute are not added to the installation package. It helps when you use something like CVS that puts auxiliary files to hidden folders. You may disable the hidden files and folders filter using by unchecking a box on page Files of the Packager.
Now you may choose whether the application must be installed for all users of the system or just the user that runs the installer. The options are:
Do you want to know why people uninstall your product? Excelsior Delivery can ask them about. New feature allows you to invite your client to your web page or send you an e-mail to give some feedback about his/her reasons to uninstall.
Now you can replace the icon of installation wizard dialogs. New icon can be set in branding dialog that invoked by button "Branding..." on page Details, tab "Installer appearance".
Now you can replace images, texts and titles on the dialogs of the installation wizard to create a uniform appearance for your software product setups (see screenshots).
Rebranding dialog is invoked by button "Branding..." on page Details, tab "Installer appearance". For more details see section "Specifying Installation Settings"/"Installer branding" in the User's Guide.
Excelsior Delivery now allows you to specify a custom callback DLL that will be invoked once just before copying files and once after the copying process is finished. This DLL can adjust package files or settings to a specific machine environment and/or perform extra installation actions.
As well you can specify a custom callback DLL that will be invoked once just before uninstallation is started, so it can perform custom uninstallation actions.
Both callback DLLs can be specified on page Details, tab "Extra facilities". For more information on the programming of the callback DLLs see section "Installer"/"Callback DLLs" in the User's Guide.
When preparing an Excelsior Delivery setup, you can specify a program from the installation to be associated with a particular file type depending on the file name extension. The functionality is available through the Packager wizard. If a file association was specified, Excelsior Delivery will display a dialog that shows the file name extensions, description of the associated programs and checkboxes to enable/disable a particular association.
You may now add typical post-install actions to the last page of the installation dialog. Examples are launching the application just installed, viewing the readme file, restarting the computer, etc. etc.
The version information, such as company name and product version, is propagated from Windows executables and used as the default settings for Excelsior Installer setups.
When preparing update packages for the created installations, Excelsior Installer now enables you to easily inspect and commit changes between the original installation and the respective files and directories on the disk. As a result, you can add the new and modified files and directories to the update package in a few mouse clicks.
The difference tracker is invoked automatically when you start preparing an update, or can be invoked manually through the main menu of Excelsior Installer.
Excelsior uninstaller can be configured to remove all files from the installation folder including those created by the application after installation.
When preparing the installation package, you can set this option on page Details, tab "Extra facilities" (see "Specifying Installation Settings"/"Extra facilities" in the User's Guide).
Excelsior Installer wizard now allows you to quickly open one of the recently saved projects (see "Opening a project" sections in the User's Guide for details.)
This release introduces a Windows Vista support. Other improvements are:
The key improvement is the reduced installer overhead, illustrated in the following table:
| Application | Package size | |
| v1.0 | v1.1 | |
| Empty installation, 0 KB unpacked | 580 KB | 180 KB |
| Sample application, 728 KB unpacked | 1050 KB | 372 KB |
The first release of Excelsior Installer as separate product. It supports the most common installation scenario.
The project was started. Work on the Excelsior JET product have led us to the understanding that it must be equipped by its own installation toolkit. Then Excelsior JET customers asked us many times if they could use it to distribute their other software products. For several years we had to answer "no".