I just downloaded ThinApp 4.0 from the VMware website. The screens below show the installation screens and setup capture screens to have some idea about what the product looks like.
The installer is very small (around 7MB). I created a Windows XP virtual machine in VMware Workstation, installed ThinApp 4.0 and created a snapshot. The snapshot allows me to revert to it after creating a package in order to start with a clean machine whenever I create a package. Note that it is recommended to start the ThinApp setup capture process from a network share instead of installing it on your capture workstation.
First, let's start the installation.
You have to enter a serial number and license display name. You can get a trial key at www.vmware.com for 60 days. The trial includes VMware Workstation 6 as well if you don't have it yet.
After installation you get the following shortcuts in the Start Menu:
With ThinApp Setup Capture you capture the installation of a piece of software. When launched, you get the following screens:
Of course, you need to run setup capture on a clean computer. The next dialog tells you that but also allows you to set advanced settings.
The advanced settings:
You normally don't need to change anything in the Advanced settings. Continuing with the setup wizard, the prescan starts. Scanning is very fast.
When the prescan finishes you get the dialog below. Now it is time to start an installation. I installed Opera 9 (not shown).
After installation, you click Next in the dialog above. ThinApp can now start the postscan in order to determine the differences.
Now you can select the entry points. Multiple entry points are possible, for example when you virtualize Office with Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
You can configure the application so that only specific users can run it. AD groups are used for this purpose. The sandbox location is a location where ThinApp can store the user's settings. If the user sets favorites in Opera for example, they are stored in the sandbox.
The next dialog asks for the isolation mode. The explanations in the dialog speak for themselves.
You can accept the default location for the project. The MSI generation checkbox is not checked by default. It generates a standard MSI that can be deployed to user's desktops with tools such as Altiris or SCCM 2007.
The project is then created.
In the final screen you can browse the project and make changes or build the project. I will not do that and click Finish to end the capture.
Note that when you just click Finish, your virtualized application is not created. You need to actually build the project for that. A next post will show you how the build process works without using the Build Now button in the dialog above.
