WyUpdate feature request - replacing "wyUpdate" with "X"

I've been using WyBuild and WyUpdate for around a year and so far it is the best updating solution I've worked with. One of the requirements set by my employer is for all third party UI elements to be branded so our software does not include any user visible leads to what third parties are being used in it.

In the case of wyupdate, since it is open source, I've been rebranding the source code and creating a custom wyupdate version so far. As you know, this process involves refreshing the source code everytime a new version is released, rebranding it, compiling, updating the custom wyupdate version wybuild project, and publishing the custom version.

In my opinion, this process seems fine if the modifications were more than a simple rebranding of the title bar and the WyUpdate program name at the bottom of the updater UI.

I know we can change the title on the wybuild project properties already. But it will help me (and a lot of other wybuild customers I believe) if this property would also change all references to WyUpdate in the user UI. This can alliviate some overhead for the customers as we have to be constantly checking for new releases of wyupdate in order to rebrand the updater user UI.

Again, WyBuild and WyUpdate are great tools, and WyDay support is always there to fix any problems we encounter while working with these tools. I just want to make distribution a littler easier for those of us who are required to rebrand.

Thank you.

We'll consider it, but you must realize that even if we replaced all instances of "wyUpdate" with "X", that the UAC prompt would still show the app as being "wyUpdate" from company "wyDay":

[attachment=0]wyUpdate-uac.png[/attachment]

That is, due to the design of Windows, we could never fully replace "wyUpdate" with "X". In fact, it would be featured in a spotlight (so to speak) when the UAC prompt shows. That is, you could call wyUpdate "Updater Pro", but when the UAC prompt is shown the program will be called "wyUpdate". This disparity in names might do more to confuse the user when confusion can do the most harm (you don't want the user clicking "No").

This might seem like some sort of ego-trip, but it's not. We carefully considered the name issue as it relates to UAC & companies sensitive to "foreign branding". That's why we chose the generic-sounding "wyUpdate" name.

I do understand your concern, but there's no way to completely remove the "wyUpdate" brand from wyUpdate without modifying the source, recompiling, code-signing, and releasing your own version.

P.S. You don't need to be anonymous to challenge our design decisions. 😉

I understand the UAC issue because of the code signing process. Nonetheless, some applications are not installed onto the system directories, nor updates affect any system files thus no UAC prompts are displayed.

Also, some developers can instead warn their users before the updater starts (like some websites that use ActiveX controls and warns the user with the instruccions and screenshots of the prompts they will see).

Last, wyupdate.exe could be code-signed using the Digital Signature Wizard (signtool.exe signwizard) utility without having to recompile. A developer could create a wybuild project and just code-sign new versions of wyupdate.exe since all the rebranding is done in the developer application wybuild project.

Any of these 2 scenarios would take significant less time to achieve since rebranding would not involve all the different steps currently needed in order to achieve it.

I would very much like this feature as well. It could save me lots of time while dealing with branding since I have to repeat the rebranding process for each wyupdate version update.

We'll consider it for a future version. In the meantime you can just write a simple script that...

  • Checks out the correct version from our SVN repository
  • Replaces all instances of "wyUpdate" with "X" in all *.cs files
  • Builds & signs the exe

This will reduce the pain from an hour+ manual job to a quick 2 minute automated job.

Thank you Wyatt. Could you please provide an example of this script? It would be very appreciated.

No, I don't have any script on hand. Here are the first & third steps:

Checkout wyUpdate from subversion:

svn checkout http://wyupdate.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ wyupdate-read-only

Then, see the article: How do I compile a Visual Studio project from the command-line?.

If you want to rebrand, you can get your graphics designers to create a custom theme with a big logo in wyBuild.

Its easy to do, it might not be as hard core as rebuilding and resigning wyUpdate, though, but few will notice.

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