No-Touch Deployment versus ClickOnce

Mark Levison, one of the developers I interviewed for the .NET story, thinks that Microsoft has undersold the benefits of No-Touch Deployment (NTD), the current solution for running rich .NET clients from the Web. Having done the gruntwork required to understand and use NTD, Mark's not so sure that developers ought to write off this technology and wait for Whidbey's ClickOnce.

I think David [Treadwell] misses much of the point. The caching features of No-Touch Deployment (NTD) work well enough. Click Once will be useful, but there are many other issues dealing with NTD apps. My impression is that MS didn't dog-food enough NTD. I think there are a few key areas that need work. [Mark Levison]

Mostly, Mark's asking for documentation and tutorials that will enable other developers to use NTD effectively, and spare them much of the painful R&D he had to go through. In his posting, he ticks off a very specific and well thought-out list of suggested items to cover in tutorials.


Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/03/05.html#a935