James first started this website when learning Visual Basic back in 1999 whilst studying his GCSEs. The site grew steadily over the years while being run as a hobby - to a regular monthly audience of over half a million unique developers. In July '08 James left his job as Head of Development at a digital agency in London to focus his energies on developerFusion full-time.
What I see as one of Wise for Windows Installer's main strengths is its ability to provide both an easy to use interface, whilst still retaining direct access to the tables used in the MSI file, making it suitable for both beginner and advanced users. It also includes a number of useful wizards which includes an all important 'Import VB Project' wizard, along with a Patch Wizard, SetupCapture and a wizard to check the installation against the Application Specification for Windows 2000 requirements (although unfortunately I was unable to get even the basic setup program to pass sucessfully!).
All in all, an excellent program giving you almost total control of Windows Installer installations.
However, the product does have a few usability issues, and if you start renaming or deleting items in your project, expect multiple errors to start appearing! Some advanced users might also be disappointed in that it's control is not absolute... Before purchasing, it is worth considering the InstallShield Professional - Windows Installer Edition too!
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