Am I right in thinking that a portable application is any application that does not write to the registry, and does not put icons on the desktop.
Thanks
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https://portableapps.com/about/what_is_a_portable_app this will explain it all for you
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
Right Zach, that's a well-written piece but it doesn't cover everything.
The bare minimum an application needs to be portable is that it can run on a flash drive or external hard drive and still work after a reformat/reinstall of Windows, or run on a second machine with different hardware that has never had that program (or its dependencies) installed. This excludes anything that needs the .NET framework to run, or similar.
Ideally the portable app should leave no PERSONAL information behind. The app might still leave traces, but as long as, say your passwords and web history are cleaned up afterward, but with a little bit of tech know-how you can do that on your own.
To be featured on this site, apps must do all that, plus they must be open-source, and free to redistribute. Also they come with a nice launcher that displays a pretty splash screen and ensures the app cleans up after itself and is drive-letter independent, all that good stuff.
However the IDEAL portable app is what we call Stealth. This type of app leaves absolutely nothing behind, and when it closes out, it cleans up after itself and you won't ever know it ran.
How portable an app is really depends on your needs. The bare minimum is all you need if you want apps that will survive a reformat/reinstall on another drive, but if you're to be using other computers which might have certain restrictions, you'll want more portability/stealth.
The whole point of a portable app is to be portable. Running without install doesn't mean portable (most apps can do that with the exception of DRMy apps). Less than our definition is "half-assed" in my book. Any app not meeting what you call 'ideal' is not considered portable and can't be released in PortableApps.com Format.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks for the responses.
I hesitate to ask this, but here goes.
If there are two applications that are the same, one portable, the other not.
Why bother with the application that is not portable, since the portable could be installed, if the user has the rights. If not run from a CD ot USB drive?
Best wishes
A
For example, if you install Firefox and Thunderbird, and click on a link in an email in TB, you can easily set it to open it in Firefox.
If you use the portable versions of each, there is no easy way ti achieve the same.
Similarly, if you install OpenOffice, you can simply double-click on a document in Windows Explorer to open it. If you use the portable version, this will not work. There are workarounds, such as installing and something like PortableFileAssociator or CAFEmod(Espresso?) from this site, but they need to be configured (which a fair percentage of people have trouble with) for each and every single app that you have individually, and then they also need to be running before you get this functionality.
While technically, there is nothing that you cannot tweak to get the functionality of the installed app with the portable one, what you actually end up with if you do, is basically the installed app, but with much much more hassle to get to that point.
All that said, nothing is black and white. There are many people who do use only PortableApps wherever possible to make reinstalling or PC migration easy, and it is a powerful advantage.
Others use a mix of the two. For example, I use Thunderbird Portable as my email client for all my personal emails. I have it on the hard drive of my PC at home, my laptop at work, and also on a flash drive. I keep the three copies in sync, but it means that I always have my mail at home or work, even if I forget my flash drive, and anywhere else provided I take it along.
So, basically, each type of app does have some advantages over the other. Which one is best for you depends on your personal usage model and preferences.
Thank you for the detailed response.
Much appreciated.
Best wishes
A
You can stretch or relax definition of portability in many different ways. In my book not getting full path portability is worse than leaving rubbish behind. So actually some PA.com apps are much less portable for me than great majority of wikipedia-portable apps. Too bad that you don't list it anywhere.
"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov
The point of a portable app is to be able to put it on a device (flash drive, portable hard drive, etc) and move it from PC to PC. There's no reason to move an app around within directories except for OCD types who organize and reorganize and reorganize their drives
Only a couple features of a couple apps are path locked, usually in relation to linking to outside features, EXEs, etc. So you just have to reset those features if you choose to move it. On the other hand, leaving stuff behind = FAIL.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I just show you another point of view. As your portfolio grows you have to reorganize it because having 100 programs in one directory is inconvenient. Actually it usually works bad even with 10+ for me. For this single reason I had a dozen of small reorganizations.
If something doesn't work, it's much bigger failure for me.
"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov