SharePoint Builder and ClickOnce

I've been pretty swamped trying to get Life 1.0 going and lots of little pet projects finished up. One of which is my SharePoint Builder tool, a visual xml builder editor that will let you modify ONET.XML and SCHEMA.XML files using properties and such (rather than text editing). It's been a long time trying to get it going but it looks like the next week or so will see the release to the testers (please no more requests for testing as I have a ton of people already).

A couple of things about the project. I'm going to be deploying it via ClickOnce and it will be using the .NET 2.0 Framework. So far the tests are good. You just go to a website and click Install and down it comes. I've even tested it with a box that didn't have .NET 2.0 on it. Since I flagged the app to have this as a pre-requisite it just downloaded and installed it for me, then continued installing SharePoint Builder. The app will check online for new versions (if you're connected) and let you know of the an update. You'll have the choice to download it or not but it means I'll have 0-issues with keeping the program up to date. I think this is proabably the bigged and coolest feature I've found in .NET 2.0. I mean, I just publish it from the IDE and next time you launch the program you'll get any changes. No more having to send out emails to people. Of course we'll still be doing things like posting change logs and notes to let everyone know, but it's a very slick feature to have. Hopefully the testers will be kind to me as this will be my first ClickOnce deployed app. Lets see if everything goes well.

I'll be posting new screenshots and feature information on the tool over the next week as things wind down with Christmas and all. Should be a fun week. Hope you're curled up in front of a fire somewhere warm (or some such silly thing that people do on Christmas).