Deploy WPF ClickOnce .application File as .EXE

I've developed a WPF application. A large company is trying to make my application available to users' desktops. The traditional way to do this would be to point the users' browsers to:

http://www.MySite.com/MyApp.application

But the I.T. group at this company has configured their proxy server in such a way so as to block .application files for security reasons. They do, however, allow .exe files to pass through their pr开发者_Go百科oxy server and execute on client workstations. The irony of allowing .exe's from the Internet while blocking .application text files "for security reasons" isn't wasted on me but let's put that aside for a moment.

What kind of workaround would you recommend that would allow my app to launch from client desktops given that .EXEs are allowed? My first thought is to write a mini launcher app that does nothing more than download a .zip'd version of the .application file and all dependencies to a temp folder on the user's machine and then launch the .application file from there. Is there a better solution?

FWIW: Google has figured out a way to deploy their Chrome browser to Windows desktops in corporations like this one, despite the fact that ClickOnce is their deployment mechanism. If you view the source code at:

http://www.google.com/chrome/thankyou.html?&oneclickinstalled=

...you'll see they're pointing to an installer at:

/update2/installers/clickonce/GoogleInstaller_en.application.

That's a clickonce file. But somehow they've figured out a way to wrap it in an .exe in order to bypass proxy restrictions on .application files. I not familiar enough with JScript to understand what they're doing but it works. I'm trying to emulate this behavior for my own app.

This may not work for your situation. However, one possibility is to xcopy your exe and any dependencies to a folder on your webserver. Add a link in a webpage to your exe so your users can launch the app by clicking the link. In order for any of the users to be able to run the exe the first time, a caspol script needs to be run on each user machine to allow your app to run. Whenever you update the app, just xcopy the new version to the same folder on the webserver.