A few weeks ago I raved about VS2005. One of the things I really liked about it was the ClickOnce deployment. ClickOnce is the ability to “publish” your software to the net and support auto-update all through a simple build step in VS2005. Its very slick!
Alas, today I ran into a fatal flaw for ClickOnce – it doesn’t work for FireFox. Several small companies I know that were excited about ClickOnce have all backed off their initial enthusiasm, with this bug being a major reason why. Unfortunately, not supporting firefox in this day and age just isn’t acceptible. If you are building tools for ISVs, you know that you can’t just “not work” for some segment of your population.
Hence, ClickOnce is relegated to an IT-only tool, where it can be used for internat deployments at companies that don’t allow FireFox.
The good news, if there is any, is that the Microsoft team is well aware and promise that they are working on a fix. But I can’t say I’m not really disappointed in this.
More information can be found from Microsoft Developer Saurabh Pant, and Scott Hanselman.