PortableApps.com is proud to announce the 1.5 release of the PortableApps.com Platform, making it easier than ever to carry your favorite software with you. This new update makes the most popular portable software platform even better than before with lots of new features and a slick new look. Browse the web, check your email, chat online, listen to music, keep your passwords secure, work on documents, check your datebook and even play a few games... all on the go. And, as always, it's all open source and completely free.
The PortableApps.com Platform 1.5 is available for immediate download from PortableApps.com.
New In PortableApps.com Platform 1.5
The PortableApps.com Platform 1.5 release adds lots of new features including:
New Theme - The PortableApps.com Menu has a greatly improved display engine and a slick new theme to go along with it. It's PNG based allowing transparent hovers on buttons and other great looking extras. And the next release of the platform in 2 weeks will let you theme it yourself.
App Icon Renaming - Now you can rename all your apps so they appear just as you like.
App Icon Hiding - You can easily hide icons right from the menu. This is especially useful when you add apps that aren't in PortableApps.com Format (Did you know the PortableApps.com Platform works with all portable apps?).
Better Multilingual Support - The Platform now supports 37 languages and has a 55 langauge installer making it easy for everyone to install and use.
App Language Switching - When you switch languages in the menu and then launch one of our multilingual apps like Pidgin, GIMP, Notepad++, VLC and others, the app will automatically come up in the language the menu is set to. This way, you don't have to hunt around in an app to figure out how to change its language. (Of course, the app has to support your chosen language for this to work properly.)
Improved Wallpaper Swapper - The built in wallpaper swapper now supports widescreen and standard wallpapers and will automatically use the best one for the PC you're on.
Run As (Admin) - You can now run individual applications as an admin or other user directly within the menu.
Hide Desktop Icons - You can optionally have the platform hide the PC's desktop icons while it's running, giving you a cleaner desktop.
Transparency - The menu supports a new transparency setting to give it a glassy effect and see the desktop below it.
App Details on Hover - When you hover over an app's icon, you can see all the details of the app. Now you don't have to start it up to remember what version you have installed.
Full details are on the support page...
Installing and Upgrading
Whether installing or upgrading, with PortableApps.com, it's a snap. Just download the new PortableApps.com Platform 1.5 release and install it to your portable device's root directory. If you're upgrading, it will automatically detect your existing install.
Another Release Coming Soon!!
Best of all, another release of the PortableApps.com Platform is coming within the next couple weeks. We did this interim release to get some new features and functionality in the hands of users and so that OpenOffice.org could give away the latest and the greatest at CeBIT in Germany this week. The 2.0 release will have all the features of 1.5 plus new theming options and other advanced features. Look for the first beta test to hit the forums within a few days.
Download Today
The PortableApps.com Platform 1.5 is available for immediate download from PortableApps.com/download. Get it today!
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Comments
Holy Crued!!!
Thank you so much!!!
Awesome!
Thanks, John. And as usual, great work!
Bug: Missing icons in 1.5 platform
All icons from official Portable Apps disappeared after upgrading the platform to 1.5. Other apps icons are still there, though. Weird....
Forums
Please post any issues in the forum here:
https://portableapps.com/forums/support/portableapps_menu
Thanks so much for your work
Thanks so much for your work on this John. I'm glad to to see the platform is growing in terms if usability.
MD5
Thanks a lot for all of your hard work and dedication to this project, PortableApps Rocks! Open-Source guys and gals, keep up the awesome work, your projects are much appreciated. And lastly, would you mind updating the MD5 sums on the suite page to reflect the updates, Thank You!
Updated
MD5 has been updated.
I wub you <3
The best yet :DDDDD
Yeah!
Portable Apps is picking up the good features of geek.menu without the horrible issues like the crashes.
Additional Black theme
Hi,
Would be great if you release the platform in with two in-built theme default red and other the black. Currently i'm using black theme provided for 1.1 release.
It fails to work with 1.5 release since background file is bmp and not new png.
Now Awaiting the release 2.0
Great Work on this release.
2.0
2.0 will be getting 6 color themes at release including the new red and an updated black theme.
cannot wait for full PNG
cannot wait for full PNG theming, will look awesome after treating it with Win7 look alike theme
"run individual applications as an admin or other user"
I like the look of :-
"Run As (Admin) - You can now run individual applications as an admin or other user directly within the menu."
Should I wait 2 weeks for version 2.0, or will this release provide a form of "User Profiles" to support different users of Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird.
With the existing NON-Portable defaults installed in C:\ :-
Firefox has technical computer sites but no cookery recipe sites in my bookmarks,
and vice versa for my daughter's use of Firefox.
Similarly my Thunderbird Inbox receives no recipes etc.,
and User Profile enforced privacy leaves me in blissful ignorance ! !
Additionally, for each of us Thunderbird knows the relevant email server and user name / password.
I have not previously considered Portable Firefox/Thunderbird because I would prefer not to abandon privacy, nor wish to intermingle cookery and computer web-sites. And logging into email servers should remain automatic.
Do the existing or future Portable versions, together with Platform 1.5 or 2.0, meet any of my hopes ?
n.b. I have a partition reserved for Portable Applications,
hence we do not have individual flash drives to give customised sets of book marks and email passwords.
Regards
Alan
Different / Multiple Profiles Coming
What you want is different and not a part of the PortableApps.com Platform which is intended for a single user on a personal portable device. What would work best for you is truly a computer with multiple logins as I use at home and as every modern OS supports.
Within the next few weeks, the ability to do a secondary profile within Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird will be released. It will have its own icon in the menu. It will be an add-on. If you have further issues in this vein, the forums is the place to discuss them (this is a news story for a platform release and not the best place to address it).
Thank you for quick response
Thank you for quick response John.
I will look out for such add-ons, and post future queries to the forums.
Regards
Alan
Looks Great
the new version looks great
thought I was on the dev team though
have a suggestion for the installer, maybe could be implemented in 2.0
when installing to a fixed drive, have the installer give the option to add a shortcut. I run the entire sweet from the c: on one machine so I usually create a shortcut to it. I believe I've read in the forums that some others are doing the same so adding a shortcut to the windows start menu would be helpful.
"I don't think you can detect
"I don't think you can detect WINE and the transparency thing is a bug within WINE itself, so nothing we can do."
Responding to your comment in the locked RC thread John... you can detect WINE since it keeps some settings in the registry that you can look for. HKLM\Software\Wine or something.
A bit of a hackish way of doing it but it seems Valve's Half-Life scans for these registry entries on startup. Not sure if the Source engine games do it (I was trying to diagnose a game crash at the time I noticed it).
BTW not exactly nothing you can do about it. If you don't want to go the compatibility hack route (or don't have a linux machine or the patience to set up a vm) you... or even better, the guy who reported this... can file a report in the Wine AppDB, and possibly a bug report in their bugzilla DB.
Thanks John :-)
Thanks John
Just a few suggestions
Just a few things that I am hoping to see in an upcoming release: Choose picture to use with wallpaper swap more easily set (like choose picture in the options menu as opposed to having a picture with a specific name in the pictures folder), jpeg support for wallpaper, auto close all apps when eject, single click ejection ( instead of bringing up the eject screen), arrangement option of the apps list, downloadable themes like on the ptc mod version (see http://ptc.kain-planet.de/), and perhaps a password required to load the PortableApps menu so I don't have to password protect each app on its own. Also, I think that the menu should have more options when right clicking on an item, and that there should be an option of auto running an app at start up. Again, just my thoughts on things that could be done, and I hope that you consider them.
new thread
Check out my thread on portableapps menu vs. geek.menu kind of shows what progression I would hope the portable apps suite goes into.
THANKS!! I cant wait to try
THANKS!! I cant wait to try this out John!
thanks for the great work on this..
and your patience...
More of the same
It would be nice to see a sub menu be added or a create folder like in geek.menu so I could have my apps in categories instead of just having every app in 1 window in geek.menu I could put all my internet based programs in an internet folder for easy finding. I know geek.menu is based off an old code for older suite but some of the options are way better than regular portable apps but am glad 2 see I can now come back to portable apps menu. Oh and for some reason after updating to 1.5 the auto start on insertion of my flash drive doesn't work that might be something that needs to be looked into.