PACE Suite 5.2: a new level of user experience

We at PACE Suite are firm believers in consistent yet always improving user experience. That is why today we release PACE Suite 5.2, which extends the beloved user experience from the Files, Shortcuts and Registry tabs of MSI Editor to MSI Generator. We are delighted that our users were quick to adopt our simple yet nuanced approach to editing packages in MSI Editor. Now, we bring the same clean interface and neat features to creating packages to make it much easier to manage project resources for both newcomers and packaging ninjas. New Tree List view and Properties windows provide the maximum information about each selected entry, bring highlighting and various filters and make managing these resources faster and easier.We have, of course, more new things for you. From enhanced performance to a number of user-requested features – read on to learn what else is new and please enjoy PACE Suite 5.2!

New Files tab

Enjoy a user-friendly Tree List in the Files tab and find both included and excluded resources in a single view with description of each item’s type, size and state. This view makes it easier to see all captured and manually added files of a folder, especially for the deep folders tree. The highlighting rules and filters helps you to navigate faster and easily find the necessary resources.Use this tab to quickly edit name, parent folder and manage permissions of the captured and manually added project files and folders using the new Properties dialog. You can also move files and folders, add system folders by simply selecting them from a list we compiled for you, and delete unnecessary resources from the project. Note that deletion is available only for the excluded resources and deletes the selected resource not only from the MGP project but from the project folder on the file system as well. Neat!The improvedImport files function is reborn as a smart Wizard, which displays details of the selected files and extracts the COM information from them on-the-fly.

New Shortcuts\Apps tab

Navigate to the Shortcuts\Apps -> MSI tab as well and find our Tree List view again! Now, you can easily locate both included and excluded folders and MSI shortcuts in a single view with the description of the item type, shortcut target and state. This view makes it easier to see all captured and manually added MSI shortcuts and their details. The highlighting rules and filters helps you to find the necessary resources. You can also click Expand all to see all MSI shortcuts of your project.Edit name, installation folder, shortcut type, target and other shortcuts properties using the new Properties dialog. Also, you can select a new shortcut icon either from the existing project icons or import new one from the file.Easily move shortcuts using the context menu, add new subfolders and system folders, and delete unnecessary MSI shortcuts from the project.

New Registry tab

You’ve guessed it – we added a Tree List to the Registry tab too! Find both included and excluded resources in a single view with the description of the item type, registry value and state. For the registry keys, you can edit its name, parent key, root (hive) and set permissions. For the registry values, you can edit its name, type, value, key and hive. Also, here you can find the initial registry value for those values, which were changed during the capturing.You can create new registry keys and values, move them and delete unnecessary ones using the context menu.The improved Import registry function parses the selected REG files and displays registry values that will be imported. You can review parsed data and remove unnecessary entries.

APPV and MSIX app deletion

Delete the unnecessary MSIX and APPV apps and their linked data using the context menu.Note that deletion is available only for the excluded resources.

Other Improvements

We’ve added a whole bunch of small but important features to MSI Generator:

• Improved speed of building large MSI packages.
• Ability to override the MSI summary information, obtained from the profile, with the custom one.
• Fixed issue with the wrong path to the @ParentDir@ variable in the Quality Assistant.
• Cancelation of the build process responses faster.

We haven’t forgotten about MSI Editor too – leverageautomatic integration of the missing necessary standard actions into the opened MSI package when you save it. It’s not artificial intelligence yet, but PACE Suite still watches your back in an intelligent way!

There’s so much more to enjoy in this new release! Check PACE Suite 5.2 Release Notes for the complete description of all the new stuff. Don’t forget to check our PACE Suite User Manual – your go-to guide to software packaging with PACE Suite.