IE BHO - Auto update management

Question

In an IE BHO written in C#, how can I add auto update functionality? If we release a new version of the same BHO, how can the client update the BHO? In FF/Chrome/Safari I found the way. Is there any solution available for MSIE BHOs?

Answer 1

I don't think there is a standard way of doing this in IE that is analogous to FF RDF's

<em:updatelink>

or Chrome manifest's

"update_url":

I would suggest that you poll your web server from the BHO periodically (monthly?). If you find a new version of your BHO, download it and ask the user to install it. Bear in mind that an updated BHO is a different program and should have a different GUID, meaning that your registration of the new BHO needs to remove the previous, and now useless, BHO.