Founded 2010 | Website www.installcore.com | |
installCore is an installation and content distribution platform, including an software development kit (SDK) for Windows and Mac OS X. The program allows those using it for distribution to include monetization by advertisements, charging for installation, etc.; some of the products using the platform have been rated potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA), by anti-malware product vendors. The platform was primarily designed for efficient web based deployment of various type of application software. As of August 2012 installCore was managing 100 million installations every month, offering services for paid, unpaid and free software (using the SDK version). installCore is a product of ironSource which is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel with offices in San Francisco, CA in the United States and Beijing, China,
Contents
History
The installCore team introduced the first version of the SDK at the beginning of 2011 the SDK was a fork of the FoxTab installer and had only basic Installation features. The first version only include 3 files - system.js, application.js and packages.js which support over the web software packages delivery and basic system modifications. The second version introduced debug capabilities, transparent support for the different windows versions and web forms support it also enabled seamless integration of JQuery and CSS 2.1 for better UI design
Features
installCore development platform provides a software development kit (SDK) based on JavaScript and HTML/HTML 5.0. Installation project can be compiled into a windows executable file and used for the software installation and distribution. The platform supports the following features:
JavaScript and HTML based user interface
Version 2.1 introduced a fully customizable design interface based on HTML, CSS and a JavaScript SDK.
Since installCore version 4.10 the SDK integrated 12 fully pre-designed templates and a customization tool to create a WYSIWYG design.
Monetization features
The program has features supporting generation of revenue for users by advertising, charging for program installation, etc.
Compiler make script
The installCore compiler program HtmlUiMaker uses a make script, such as the following example, in order to compile a JavaScript and HTML skin into executable installation programs.
Generated installer
The generated installer is a Portable Executable which contains the installation script. The installer can be configured to function as full installer or a bootstrap installer. As the installation script is compiled, it cannot be obtained from the delivered executable without reverse-engineering the binary.
Multilingual support
As of version 3.1 of the official release installCore fully support both Unicode and RTL but depended on Windows 2000 with SP 4 as minimum requirement to accurately present the UI.