Since we expect Creative Docs .NET to evolve quickly in the coming weeks, we decided to add an
automatic check for updates, done once a day, when you start the application. This can be turned off in the global settings if you don't want the software to connect to the net by itself.
Implementing such a check was really simple in .NET, using
System.Net.WebRequest to connect to the web site using a simple URL, such as
http://www.creativedocs.net/update/check.php?software=CreativeDocs&version=1.1.0.0. The web page just returns a single line of text, consisting of the latest version number available on-line and the URL from where to download it.
Calling the code through a
delegate using
BeginInvoke allows us very easily to do the check asynchronously during the (long) start-up phase of the application.
The full source for the
VersionChecker class can be found
here.
