#146969 - keldon - Wed Dec 12, 2007 8:17 am
Come on, we can tell from the icon it's an installer! How about giving us something descriptive like the software name and version number!
#146981 - gauauu - Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:33 pm
My understanding (not researched at all...I'm too lazy to read about it before spouting off) is that it hearkens back to the days of windows 95.
They decided that it would be good to have a standard for the name of the installer for a program. Before that, in DOS, you never know what you had to run (and then, it sometimes WASN'T that obvious). But now users always knew which thing they had to run.
You know in the windows control panel, that "add or remove programs" thing? And how you use it to remove programs, but add? I actually remember people who would use that thing to install programs. They'd go to add, navigate to the disc or directory with the install files, and it would launch the setup.exe (since that was the standard).
I still think it's somewhat of a good idea, not in the case of when you have a master compressed executable that explodes and installs everything, but for when you have a directory of all the installation files, and there's one magic file that you need to run.
For the one big master executable, yes, it's better to say what it is and what version. But if it's the one special file in the whole directory of installation files, then the directory should include the information of what app and what version, and the setup.exe name can then jump out at you as "this is the one you need to run."
#146999 - tepples - Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:27 pm
You might think that the standard could have been "any file, as long as its name ends in setup.exe". such as "Firefox 2.0 setup.exe". But back in the Windows 95 days, long file names were brand new (250+ Unicode characters, trying to one-up Apple's 31 MacRoman characters). Worse, I seem to remember Windows 95's VFAT forgetting a file's long name on numerous occasions, especially when doing things from DOS Mode.
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#147001 - Mighty Max - Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:53 pm
And well windows still acts different on some filenames, so that some of these namings are still promoted.
Try this:
Create a file, write anything into it (i.e. some simple text)
Rename it to "Whatever.exe" and create a copy "Setup.exe"
Do you see the difference?
Same happens with "Install.exe"
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#147002 - keldon - Thu Dec 13, 2007 12:13 am
Yes, losing your long file name sucked big time! As for a Setup.exe amongst other files, that's fine since it would be provided within a folder so you would save everything under that one folder (which is probably packages as a archive).
And for some reason I am getting no change with Setup.exe and Install.exe. To be honest it was just the first thing I noticed about that 'scene' generator program.
#147030 - Mighty Max - Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:37 pm
Erm, yes sorry forgot to mention, it's under vista and UAC.
Certain filenames are automatically under "Requires Lifted Rights" getting the UAC-Shield on their icon.
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