Director @ Night

Creating Software Installers

Every now and then I have to create an installer for a project I did with Director. I mostly work online and my mind usually goes blank when I need to create one. I’m certainly used to seeing them every day as I install new software to try it out.

On the Mac I typically see the lovely “drag this to applications” statement underneath a folder, and on the PC I get led through a standard sequence of steps where I can place shortcuts in lists, icons in docks, and about five other things I never really glance at (can you tell I’m a Mac guy?). Of course, I also see the dreaded click-thru installer on the Mac…life can’t be perfect.

My tools of choice are both free/donation-ware.

On the Mac you need to install the developer tools that are included on the Mac OSX DVD. Once you’ve done that you can go to HardDrive/Developer/Applications/Utilities and you will find the application called PackageMaker. This is rather easy to use (at least for simple installers), but one of the key things to notice is when the first start the program you have to enter your organization. This line MUST start with a ‘com.yadayada’ statement. A typical example might be “com.myCompany.productName”

After that you can drag content to have it included in the package (usually just one folder full of stuff in my case). You can click on the Edit Interface button to setup the readme text that will get displayed and the software license. After everything is done you click on the Build button.

On the PC side of things you can use Inno Setup. The setup wizard will lead you through all the things that can be included with the installer that you will create including the readme file, options for names in the shortcut menu, folder full of content, the executable of the content, etc.

After going through the steps you can save also go through a build step to create the setup.exe file. The program uses a tagged text file to build the final executable, and making minor edits in that text file are relatively easy if there is a small typo in a name or you decide to change the shortcut menu name.

Both products make it rather easy to create the installers.

1 comment February 22nd, 2009

iShowU Showed Me

I rarely need to record what I see and hear on the screen, but every now and then a reason pops up. I’d used some others in the past, but on my MacIntel I was looking for a Universal program. I stumbled on to iShowU.

iShowU allows you to capture and record anything you can see on your screen, along with audio from a compatible source (like a microphone) as well as any audio from the mac itself.

I recorded my actions while playing Food Force on my 2.16 GHz Intel iMac for more than 30 minutes. If you download Food Force (it was made with Director, so was running in Rosetta-mode) you’ll see that it included a wealth of video, audio, and game play. iShowU had no problem keeping up with it all, and it left a lovely 3 Gig movie sitting on my desktop. Even on my older 1.42 GHz PPC iBook the recording was smooth (although my fan got cranked up a bit).

For just $20 it is hard to beat the price.

9 comments May 2nd, 2007