THIS RELEASE HAS BEEN REPLACED:
https://portableapps.com/node/20013
I've just posted a pre-release of the PortableApps.com Platform 1.6. I'm calling this Pre-Release 0 rather than Pre-Release 1 as it may have more rough edges than a typical pre-release we do. It also does not yet have the updated translations for the menu, backup and installer that people have been posting (which will be in Pre-Release 1). Finally, the theme switcher has been temporarily removed as I'm doing a slight retooling of it based on dragonmage's recommendation of doing sub-themes or theme variants (so you could have one theme but sub-themes within it for different colors and things like that). Otherwise, it's what we've been talking about feature-wise for the next release and then some...
What's new in 1.6:
- 120dpi Support / Missing Icons Fixed - The whole menu now properly supports 120dpi in Vista and Windows 7. There will be some visual artifacting (as with nearly all apps at 120dpi) but otherwise it all works as expected.
- Move to Top / Move to Bottom - You can now move your most-used apps to the top of the menu (similar to Pin to Start Menu in Windows) and move your least-used apps to the bottom of the menu. You'll wind up scrolling a lot less. The screenshot below shows it best.
- Better App Hiding - App hiding is now accomplished by right-clicking and then selecting Hide. The app is hidden instantly without the app list being reloaded as it is in 1.5.
- App Unhiding - You can unhide apps within the menu by right-clicking and selecting to Show Hidden Icons. Icons that are hidden are then show with a line through them. You can hide and unhide icons as you wish and then hide them again.
- Run / Run As Admin - Apps can be run or run as administrator from the right-click menu.
- App Load Progress Bar / Faster Menu Load - The menu will now load much faster and will then show a progress bar indicating how long it will take before it is done detecting all your apps.
- Uninstall Apps - You can now right-click on an app and select to uninstall it. It will remove the whole app directory after a confirmation/warning screen.
- Autorun Apps - You can now have apps automatically run when the menu loads. Just right-click on an app and select Automatically Start.
- Multimonitor Support - The menu's additional forms now properly appear on PCs with 2 or 4 displays
- Improved Wine Support - The menu will now load a square theme on Wine and avoid the pink edges that appear. (A fix for the app icons loading without all colors is being worked on)
- Better Icon Refresh (and F5) - When refreshing the app icons, you'll get the same progress bar as when the icon first loads. You can refresh by selecting it from the Options popup menu, by right-clicking an icon in the app list and selecting Refresh or by just clicking F5.
- Visual Changes - The menu no longer uses bold fonts and has the start of font switching which will let it use Tahoma on Windows XP and earlier and Segoe UI on Vista and later to better fit with the rest of the interface.
Screenshots of PortableApps.com Platform 1.6 Pre-Release 0
Menu Screenshot with Apps Moved to Top and Bottom
Menu With Right-Click App Popup Menu
Uninstall Confirmation
Download PortableApps.com Platform
Download PortableApps.com Platform 1.6 Pre-Release 0 [1MB download / 1.2MB installed]
MD5: 69b3265d7bf526ee38ffb6af02b1f4d0
You can also download the source for the platform, backup, restore and installer.
I'll be posting Pre-Release 1 with the updated translations as soon as possible. We're planning on releasing this as a final version next week on either Tuesday or Wednesday. As always, the schedule is subject to change.
Please download, test and post your feedback!
Thanks,
John
Known Issues
Sort Issue With Options - Refresh - If you click Options - Refresh App Icons, the icons you have moved to the top or bottom may not be at the top or bottom. You can workaround this by using F5 or right-clicking on an app icon and selecting Refresh. This will be fixed in PR 1.
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Works just fine for me thus far.
Whoa! this is just plain awesome. Tested on Vista SP1, no problems so far. Will torture test later.
Lead, Follow, or get out of the way.
schweet, new features works good on Vista SP1.
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
This looks great so far John. Quick test on Vista SP1
Everything works great except the progressbar. I see the progress bar when I hit F5, but on startup, the menu takes a while and then it appears without showing a bar. It just appears like it always did.
I'm on Win XPSP2.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
worked for me. Was the first thing in the menu to appear. Fonts look good too..
Wins. ProSP3
maybe its my system. Its pretty locked down.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
I have mixed feelings. Horray for the theme swap to-be-added, and the most used apps feature looks great, but the sad part is I cant use it because I have a 4GB flashdrive with practicly every app on the site on it (Plus quite a few betas) and I NEED my folders. I really want to use the new menu so badly!!!
Edit: Wow. That looks way more noobish than intended.
Simplifying daily life through technology
well I use a 250gig external hard drive and I have every app on this site downloaded and installed on it and I don't complain
but yeah at least "Categories" support will be coming soon 
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
When I've added some apps as 'Move to Top' and I then refresh app icons the moved apps return to their original places but remain bold.
They go back to top if I remove one of the 'Move to Top' settings
I'll get a picture uploaded when I find out why it won't currently
EDIT: This is on Vista SP1
I think one of the refresh commands may be missing a sort. How are you refreshing (option - refresh, right-click app icon - refresh or F5)?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Option - Refresh
The other two work fine so you're probably right.
I've confirmed it in the code and fixed it in my current build. The fix will be in 1.6 PR 1.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
This is great! I'm loving the autorun feature.
After trying to uninstall a program, the uninstaller takes more time than I think is necessary to uninstall the program (I can manually delete it a lot quicker) + remove the icon from the menu, and then after it does the uninstaller hangs until I exit the PA menu.
App: Gnucash 2.2.8
Name on menu: Gnucash Portable (Outdated)
The menu uses an API call to have Windows delete all the files and it only returns when it is complete. When you do it in Explorer on XP, Windows will say it's done before it is actually done. Something like GnuCash on a flash drive should take over a minute to delete due to the number of files. The interface appearing to hang with no feedback is an issue that I'm working on.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Probably not for this release, but could there be a better uninstaller GUI in the future? Somewhat like how NSIS uninstallers show which files are being deleted, etc.
An actual progress bar isn't easy. NSIS uninstallers already know what files and how many there will be. We don't. We could parse through and calculate and then parse through and delete, but it would be really slow (like vista when you delete a lot of files). We could show what's being deleted in the window, though. And have an animation.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
That's fine, then. Omitting the progress bar but having the files deleted shown shouldn't make it take any longer? The main reason I ask about this is so the user knows something is actually going on for larger apps (I imagine small apps won't really matter), and can maybe debug if for some reason a file was left behind (in use, etc.).
That's one of the reasons this is PR 0. The Win API call doesn't let the app do anything while it's working.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
"Move to Top" is a nice interim solution, but I think I'd prefer something like what ASuite does, with the most-run apps on the bottom. Most people keep the menu on the bottom-right, so listing the pinned apps at the bottom of the menu, where it's closer to the cursor, makes more sense than just putting them at the top of the list.
Because I'm curious how "move to top" is going to work once the PAP supports categories. Right now it takes the app out of its normal place in the menu and pins it to the top. If it's in a category though, it won't make much sense to rip it out of its category. In my opinion, it would be better to leave the icon where it is and just pin an additional shortcut to the menu.
I think the intent is to reduce the amount of scrolling.
Since all the icons align to the top, if you have more icons than the height of the menu, anything at the bottom you'd have to scroll to.
But this menu can pin apps to the bottom, too, so you can put them there if you want.
I'd like to be able to drag and drop and re-order the icons however I'd like.
In the meantime, you could always rename them with numbers preceding the names.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
No, what I meant was that anything pinned should /stay put/, regardless of the current scroll position (i.e. if something is pinned to the bottom, it should stay there even if you scroll the main list). I thought I made that clear. The current solution is sub-optimal because if you /do/ have to scroll, you then have to scroll back up to the top to get your pinned apps back in view.
A good example of the type of thing I'm looking for is ASuite's MRU list. ASuite puts a separate list of the five most-recently run apps on the bottom of the menu that stays put even if you scroll the main app list.
Now I know what you're getting at.
Well, I don't think that's on the agenda
For me, I'm happy about the autostart feature.
I'll use it to start my Cylog Toolbox, which I've configured with shortcuts to my favorite apps...
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
I've found a bug...
When I click on "Options --> Refresh App Icons" All the icons that I've put on the top, move back to their original spot. It still has the line under it and it's still bold, but it's back into it's original spot in the ABC sorting.
Right-Clicking (on any icon) and selecting "Refresh" fixes the issue, but.. Options--> Refresh App Icons doesn't. Just leaves it the same.
I think this is because the option--> Refresh App Icons is still using the code from the last release of the menu. Where as right-clicking and refreshing is using new code.
(Edit:Whoops sorry, I just found out the bug has already been found, sorry.)
Everything works good here. With the send-to-top and send-to-bottom features, I can put my most-used apps on the top and stuff I rarely use on the bottom. No more scrolling; it's not as clean as folders but it's a nice start. Autostart works as well as I'd expect; I've got Firefox and Notepad++ starting on menu launch and that works great.
I love the "Automatically Start" feature. A nice addition to this would be the option to automatically start minimized.
Thanks for all your work.
Good thinking. A nice improvement on an already great feature = )
PortableApps.com Advocate
I agree with the removal of the bold text for the most part, except I still think the links on the right should be bold, to differentiate the "system links" from the app list. You might think it would be distracting to do it this way, but that's how ASuite does it and it's not distracting at all.
Hello Group;
I like bold text. It is easier for me to see. But if there ever is a larger offical PAM
Frank D. Hubeny
If I recall, you run at 120dpi, right? Try this build. It resizes bigger under 120dpi. And going 120dpi and setting large fonts should look pretty good. I'm debating going bold when you set large fonts on. We probably won't do bold for the right side links as they are no longer bold in Windows (Vista or Windows 7).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
The right side links also don't have icons in Vista or 7, so that's a pretty weak argument. Either way I probably won't care one way or the other once PAP starts using Segoe UI under Vista instead of Tahoma.
Hey, here's an idea, since you seem to be going for consistency with the OS: Bold the right side links under XP and earlier, but not under Vista+.
The fonts were bold in Windows to make them show up better in CRTs. CRTs were still popular when XP was introduced. LCDs are far clearer and as they are now far more popular, the bolding just isn't necessary anymore for readability.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Nice work, I can't live w/o PortableApps.
Ideas:
Flag an app to always Run As Admin like Autorun.
Have a visual indicator that a app has been flagged to always Run As Admin (i.e. mini shield overlay).
Have a visual indicator that a app has been flagged to Autorun (i.e. I'm drawing a blank on this on).
This would allow the user to flag an app to Autorun and Run As Admin at the same time. Also the visual indicators would allow one to quickly scan the list and see which apps have been flagged.
Keyboard navigation. Win+P opens the menu, at the moment, but then have to switch to the mouse to select app to run. It'd be nice to be able to have focus in the list and use the arrow keys or start typing to select an app and hit enter. If this could be added then some nice keyboard shortcuts could be added as well.
Bugs (sort of):
If you Hide all apps user cannot right click and get context menu to show hidden icons to undo the hide.
If you Move To Bottom an app and then uninstall it the horizontal separator is left behind.
Once you go portable...
i really like the new PAM. However, I just wish you could have a option to change theme so you can use other themes than the original and you can easily revert to the original setting. Also this would make it easy so that you can just select where the file is located and you do not have to alter the "X:\PortableApps\PortableApps.com\App\DefaultData\Theme" location. I also believe the theme could be held in a zip/jar file to reduce space used and the file you choose is also in a zip/jar file.
-OR-
You could have an option for a saturation selector so that you could choose your own color.
Well actually we are going to use a modified zip file called .patheme so believe it or not we are ahead of you in this thought
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
Just a quick question about the .patheme file...
Is it going to be like a regular zip, which a specialty file inside to tell PAM (or the program accessing it) where the files go... similar to StepMania's SMZIP?
OR is it going to be something different that requires a specialty program (to be released later) to make them?
~TStodden
Game Monkey Likes You!
just a zip file renamed as .patheme thats all
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
I knew it was a great idea, too bad I did not think of that first...anyhow thanks for letting me know. However, when with this be implemented into PAM? By the way I love PortableApps.com!!!
supposed to be in 2.0 but the release date for it is not known at this time
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
... sorry for the late reply.
https://portableapps.com/node/18730#comment-115660
has the updated German local.
Marko
Paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!
Simply beautiful
I like how hovering over the systray icon tells you how much space in left on the drive. Is the line that appears near the top of the menu, level with the portableapps.com logo text meant to be there? Also I found that multiple single clicks on the systray seemed to cause it some trouble with bringing up the menu or putting it back down. This was irregular as it sometimes occurs after five clicks and the longest was 32 clicks before the issue happened again (I was looking to see if I preferred the fade in/out option on or off). In retrospect this may just be the host system having trouble keeping up but thought I'd bring to your attention just in case.
Many thanks and keep up the good work
PortableApps.com Advocate
Works really well! Works nicely at home on my Vista SP1 and at school with XP SP3
Would it be possible to put something like the installers have that show what is being deleted and a progress bar?
May the Shwartz be with you
I am a huge fan of PA! Keep up the excellent work, John (and all the rest of the contributors)!
Any news of when this "1.6 Pre-release 0" will move to "Pre-release 1"... or even a real release? ...and what about the time horizon for 2.0 with the much anticipated folders/categories?
P.S. This is really not meant to be unappreciative - just curious and exited like a child before Christmas :o)
It's May
Life is crunchy, anywhere
I've been using 1.6rc0 for about 2 months now on my main drive & I haven't run into any problems. Having that said, I have run into a minor annoyance or two.
1) Portable Apps Icon getting hidden from view, even when noted "Always Show". -- I believe this annoyance is with the space indicator in the hover tips. Whenever that changes, Windows always seems to "forget" the setting.
2) Space indicator doesn't update automatically with the hover tip -- I always have to pull up PAM to get the current indicator, which THEN updates the hover tip info.
These aren't major issues to force me back to 1.5, but they're things that I'd like to see fix in the future... if possible (assuming it's not a Windows thing)
~TStodden
Game Monkey Likes You!
Bug...
On Windows 7...
If you have more than one background (new feature), it only restores the current one, and doesn't change anymore.
I know Windows 7 isn't out yet, but you should prepare for it when it does become official.
It seems that if you hide all the apps on the menu you cant get a right click menu to restore them.
There are also many issue with refresh a move to top and bottom drawing the seperator bar but those are probabley allready known.
I am wondering when will you release the next pre-release, any estimates?
menu starts fast
scrolling is very slow
TAKES ABOUT 5 SECONDS TO LOAD APPS (up from 1 second in 1.5.2
overall good
ps. drive space is showing the space for C: but with PortableApps.com (F:)
okay ive been testing this pre release for 3 days thought and i find some suggestion for the app and a bug
bug:i have apps at the top (firefox and thunderbird) and the bottom (EjectUSB) and when i add a new application on the portableapps folder and refresh the menu the firefox and thunderbird keep in the middle of the menu still with bold font and the ejectUSB in a fade font.
suggestion:the eject button,i suggest to close all application like u3 launcher but not force close so example:if i have a opened document at open office.org and i press the eject button not just close but ask me first to save the document,
works just fine over here.
but one thing i miss is the possibility to add own folders in the menu just like pictures, music, documents, and so on.
i want my games folder!
joz
Will the next release have an eject script? (as it seems from the translations)
Whenever that will be....
If so i hope its a good one not a crash all portable programs one.
For example if OpenOffice is open it will ask to save your work like it does when closing it normally and only then close.
I've been using Automemscan to do a virus scan before any apps on the portable drive launch.
https://portableapps.com/node/11553
I really like this feature (was using automemscan's autolaucher as well)
Any change a startup virus scan could be built into the StartPortableApps.exe?
Currently I've just used the PAM autolauch feature to run the Automemscan.exe, which runs the virus scan and then lauches all the other programs.
Not perfect as the PAM is running before the virus scan... though I can't think how that might cause any virus problems....