Recently I had chance to look at Visual Studio 2012 RTM and this came to me as a bit of surprise that newer version of Visual Studio 2012 doesn’t have Windows Installer Project templates ! I mean you can still use Install Shield project templates but no more Windows Installer Project.
I am really upset about this exclusion and since I can’t force MSFT to do anything I will do just like any other blogger does when s/he gets pissed off … that is writing about it on blog 
…
First I must say that I really like MSFT’s products and they have produced some of very unique tools like Visual Studio which nobody else have matched , and since I work on technologies build around MSFT’s framework they are my bread ‘n butter … but sometimes even good people pisses you off right ?? MSFT has really nasty habit of removing perfectly fine item and introducing something total junk as its replacement.
For example, one of the feature I missed a lot when I transited from Win XP to Win 7 (well I was there on Win Vista for a while too 
) was Search Or how windows explorer behaves when a folder is selected which is not in center of screen. But before I fill up this post with all items that I really loved in XP and hate in new 7 … let me go to back to original topic …
So it looks like that now in VS 2012 only option is to use Install Shield LE to create Installation project. I really don’t know what MSFT is expecting to achieve by removing Windows Installer Projects. But all hope is not lost (.. Yet), if you have a Windows Installer project already created then you can still work on it in VS 2012 it’s just you can’t create new. And if you are like me where work requires you to use more than one editions of VS .. then you can still use older versions to create MSI projects .. right ??
There …. now I feel better …
It’s Just A Thought … 
