Signing Click Once Applications

If you play with Click Once deployment, you noticed that is really click twice because you will be asked if you trust the publisher.

If you want to have the real Click Once Feeling you need to have to sign your application.  Following Steps are required to do this.

1. 1.       Buy or create or a Signing Certificate

    

If you use the Click Once application for an internet deployment you should buy a certificate because your Certificate must be signed from a known root certificate. In an enterprise environment you can do self singing or better, if you have a Certificate Authority (CA) in your domain use this for creating the certificate.

1. 2.       Sign your application

    

Open the Project Properties of your application. Open Signing and add you certificate for the Click Once manifest.

 

If you deploy now and start the Click Once deployment the installer asks again if you want to install it.

 

But now you can see who create the application and that the Publisher ha valid certificate. If you are in a internet deployment scenario this is as far you can go. In an enterprise deployment you can eliminate this window, if you add the certificate in every machine in you domain in the “Trusted Publisher” Folder.