> Even if everyone was running Windows on an corporate machine, it was still more difficult to deploy new code than it is today
Is that true? As someone who was also doing native Windows desktop applications back then (C# and VB in .net from 2006-2010), ClickOnce handled everything pretty reliably for Windows XP/Vista/Server (even with weird DLL requirements -- for example, I had to ship a QuickBooks Desktop API wrapper and propritary Epson drivers in our .net desktop app)
Yes, it's not quite as reliable as "go to my-app.com". But it was way more reliable than Electron's current self-updating (.net ClickOnce loaded in a tiny fraction of the time that Slack and Discord's Electron apps take to check for updates on every launch)
Well that Wikipedia page exists so I wasn't the only one running into the issue. I will note that the time period you listed is a few years after this problem peaked. These issues were a lot more pronounced in the VB Classic era and were greatly improved in the first few releases of the .Net Framework. Your timeframe is just after that.
Is that true? As someone who was also doing native Windows desktop applications back then (C# and VB in .net from 2006-2010), ClickOnce handled everything pretty reliably for Windows XP/Vista/Server (even with weird DLL requirements -- for example, I had to ship a QuickBooks Desktop API wrapper and propritary Epson drivers in our .net desktop app)
Yes, it's not quite as reliable as "go to my-app.com". But it was way more reliable than Electron's current self-updating (.net ClickOnce loaded in a tiny fraction of the time that Slack and Discord's Electron apps take to check for updates on every launch)