Designing Installations

InstallShield 2026

There are two main perspectives in an installation project—that of the developer and that of the end user. In InstallShield, these perspectives are addressed in detail in the Components and Features views, respectively.

Components

Components represent the developer’s view of the product. They are installation authoring tools that help the developer organize similar application data—such as files, registry entries, and shortcuts—into logical groups.

To enable the end user to choose which features to install, you should divide your application into components that correspond with the features of your application. For more details, refer Separating Applications into Components.

Using InstallShield, you can also publish your project’s components.

Note:The conditions that you specify for the Publish Components, Publish Features, or Publish Product actions are not validated during design time, so use proper syntax and check to ensure that the condition produces the expected outcome.

Features

Features are the building blocks of an application from the end user’s perspective. Each feature represents a specific piece of functionality for your product—such as the help files. End users should be able to install and uninstall discrete features of your product.

For example, an end user with limited hard drive space could elect not to install a product tutorial. If the user subsequently purchases another computer or frees resources on an existing one, the previously uninstalled product tutorial could then be installed.

You should separate your application into features that correspond to the components of your application. For more details, refer Separating Applications into Features.