Friday, September 30, 2005
The New Windows Mobile 5 Application Installation Routine
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 10:00 AM
One of the changes in Windows Mobile 5 that you'll notice right away when you install a program is how it deals with device security and the location of installed files. Since April of 2000, it's been a huge pain point with Pocket PC users that in order to get an application installed onto your memory card you have to click "No" to the desktop ActiveSync question of "Install to default location?". There's nothing intuitive about that question, and as such most new users tend to go hunting for the solution to how they get programs installed onto a memory card instead of precious main RAM.
Windows Mobile 5 solves this issue in two ways. The first is that it's not longer possible to install programs into RAM - everything goes into the Flash ROM area. This was a side effect of moving to the persistent storage model. The intentional solution to this problem comes from porting the install routine from the Smartphone world (like so much of Windows Mobile 5). When you start an installation on your desktop PC, ActiveSync will no longer prompt you for where to install the software - it just runs. I'll discuss the rest of the process in a series of four images.
Figure 1: Some programs will trigger a security warning like this. I've only seen it once, so I'm not sure how PDAmill's install routine is different from what other developers do, but it's nice that Windows Mobile 5 prompts the user with this security warning instead of just executing.
Figure 2: This is what you'll see in almost every case when installing a program. Windows Mobile 5 gives this generic security warning, though it may not if the application is fully signed and coming from your mobile phone carrier.
Figure 3: Once you approve the installation of the application, you can then chose a location for it to install. This screenshot was taken on a Dell Axim X51v with a CF card, so the options showing are Device (Flash ROM) and CF Card. If I had an SD card in the X51v, it would have shown up here as well. I believe this screen comes up for any type of install routine, including CAB installs, which allows the user much greater control over managing their storage. Great!
Figure 4: The last step seems largely unnecessary, but I suppose it's beneficial to tell the user that the application is fully installed, and how they can reclaim storage space by uninstalling it.
Overall, this new method for managing program install locations is much-improved over the previous method, and should result in less devices running into the problem of running out of storage space. Now if only Microsoft would add a way to limit the cache on Pocket Internet Explorer...
Windows Mobile 5 solves this issue in two ways. The first is that it's not longer possible to install programs into RAM - everything goes into the Flash ROM area. This was a side effect of moving to the persistent storage model. The intentional solution to this problem comes from porting the install routine from the Smartphone world (like so much of Windows Mobile 5). When you start an installation on your desktop PC, ActiveSync will no longer prompt you for where to install the software - it just runs. I'll discuss the rest of the process in a series of four images.
Figure 1: Some programs will trigger a security warning like this. I've only seen it once, so I'm not sure how PDAmill's install routine is different from what other developers do, but it's nice that Windows Mobile 5 prompts the user with this security warning instead of just executing.
Figure 2: This is what you'll see in almost every case when installing a program. Windows Mobile 5 gives this generic security warning, though it may not if the application is fully signed and coming from your mobile phone carrier.
Figure 3: Once you approve the installation of the application, you can then chose a location for it to install. This screenshot was taken on a Dell Axim X51v with a CF card, so the options showing are Device (Flash ROM) and CF Card. If I had an SD card in the X51v, it would have shown up here as well. I believe this screen comes up for any type of install routine, including CAB installs, which allows the user much greater control over managing their storage. Great!
Figure 4: The last step seems largely unnecessary, but I suppose it's beneficial to tell the user that the application is fully installed, and how they can reclaim storage space by uninstalling it.
Overall, this new method for managing program install locations is much-improved over the previous method, and should result in less devices running into the problem of running out of storage space. Now if only Microsoft would add a way to limit the cache on Pocket Internet Explorer...
