[Outdated] Google Chrome Portable: Less Options, More PAF

It just dawned on me that the Chrome icon is in the Chromium SVN just like the Chromium icon I used. So I'm just gonna go ahead and use the Chrome icon instead.

It's 200kb bigger than the other one thanks to 256x256, 128x128, and 64x64 icon sizes. :o

I'm gonna go ahead and type some stuff here that I probably should include in the release notes for the next release:

Using an arbitrary version of Chrome, Chromium, or Iron:
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There are a few ways you can set up Google Chrome Portable to use a different version of Chrome or variants. First you must install Google Chrome Portable. Then you can remove the existing version of Chrome from App\Chrome-bin and replace it.

You will then have to update Data\settings\version.txt with the version number of the new version. Note that there must be no whitespace (new lines etc) or else my NSIS launcher won't properly read the Chrome version and Chrome won't run.

If your final program executable name is not App\Chrome-bin\chrome.exe you can use a GoogleChromePortable.ini file to have the launcher launch a different file. See the file in Other\Source for more info, you can use it as a template in the same directory as the launcher.

The following methods have been known to work for installing an arbitrary Chrome:

1) Copy a local Chrome installation

First make note of the version number by running Chrome and checking the About dialog. It looks something like this: 3.0.190.4

Press Win+R to open the Run dialog. On XP and below type:

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application

On Vista and above you type:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application

And click OK. This is the Google Chrome application directory. There are two ways to copy the files:

a) Open the directory corresponding with the version number you want to copy, and then the Installer directory inside that. If you extract the Chrome.7z file you find therein into your App folder it will create a Chrome-bin directory and populate it with the proper files.

OR

b) Copy the entire directory you are in. You will want to exclude the following files:

- old_chrome.exe
- Any version number directory below the newest (chrome.exe will only work with the newest).
- The Installer directory inside the version number directory.

All the files and directories go into App\Chrome-bin.

Remember to edit Data\settings\version.txt!

2) Download an arbitrary version installer:

This url will download any Chrome version you want, provided it's still on the server (old versions seem to be removed periodically):

http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/[X].[Y]/chrome_installer.exe

Replace [X] and [Y] with the third and fourth numbers from the version. Example: 3.0.190.4 has a download url of http://dl.google.com/chrome/install/190.4/chrome_installer.exe

Do not run this installer as it will silently update your local Chrome! Instead unpack it with an archiver program (7-zip works) and you will end up with a single .7z file. Extract this file into App and it will create the Chrome-bin file and populate it with the proper files.

Remember to edit Data\settings\version.txt!

Removing unneeded components
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Chrome ships with multiple languages support and a DOM Inspector, both of which can be removed.

To remove languages, open the App\Chrome-bin\[version number]\Locales directory, and remove any language file you do not need. Most users will only need en-US.dll.

To remove DOM Inspector, remove the App\Chrome-bin\[version number]\Resources directory. DOM Inspector will still be available within Chrome as an option but will not function (the popup window will have an error message).

In addition if you installed a custom Chrome version by hand keep in mind that the App\Chrome-bin\[version number]\Installer directory is not needed and should be removed.

You can also experiment with removing App\Chrome-bin\[version number]\gears.dll to remove Google Gears support but I don't know if that will work or not.

wow_helper.exe is used for 64-bit support for the sandbox and if you don't intend to run on 64-bit you don't need it.

Enabling First Run
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You can trigger the first run dialog in Google Chrome Portable to import bookmarks from the local machine by deleting App\Chrome-bin\First Run and then running Google Chrome Portable.

Compressing with UPX
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Due to limitations of PAF (I still like it I swear) UPX cannot be used to compress the downloaded Chrome files automatically.

You can compress some of them by hand if you wish.

Do not compress the following files:
- chrome.exe (breaks rendering processes)
- avcodec-*.dll (breaks HTML5 <audio> and &ltvideo>
- Locales DLLs (causes Chrome to crash on run))
- Themes\default.dll (breaks graphics)

The following files do compress without breaking Chrome:
- avformat-*.dll (errors when trying to unpack with UPX.exe... but still seems to work)
- avutil-*.dll
- chrome.dll
- gears.dll
- icudt*.dll (already compressed optimally!)
- pthreadgc2.dll
- rlz.dll

New versions of Chrome may add more binaries, be sure to test Chrome if you compress any of them.

Copying a local profile
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Press Win+R to open the Run dialog. On XP and below type:

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data

On Vista and above you type:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data

This is your profile dir and should be copied to Data\profile (so you will have Data\profile\Default and a few files).

You should exempt Default\Cache from the copy. You may also want to trim your profile down a bit regularly, in particular the History Index files can get large. You should use the in-Chrome options for purging old data. Note that removing the Thumbnails file may seem like a good idea but then your icons on your bookmarks will be gone.

You can further reduce the profile size by disabling malware and phishing protection in Chrome and then removing the Safe Browsing files from the profile.

In the end it may be prudent to simply export your bookmarks from Chrome and then re-import them in a fresh profile to keep file sizes down.

Cleaning up in case of a launcher crash
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If the GoogleChromePortable process does not exit normally, it will leave some bits and pieces that need to be cleaned up, as most portable launchers will:

1) HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Update\Clients\{8A69D345-D564-463c-AFF1-A69D9E530F96}\pv will be set to the Portable Chrome version. If the local Chrome is a different version this value will need to be adjusted to match. If there is no local Chrome the entire key should be deleted.
2) If there is no local Chrome HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\chrome.exe, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm\OpenWithList\chrome.exe, and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.html\OpenWithList\chrome.exe should all be deleted. Otherwise HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\chrome.exe\shell\open\command should be set to the location of the local chrome using the following templates.

For XP:

"C:\Documents and Settings\[Username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -- "%1"

Vista:

"C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -- "%1"

Chrome overwrites this value with it's own location when run portably so the launcher will restore it on close.

3) Make sure there is no Data\settings\GoogleChromePortableShuttingDown and delete it if it exists.
4) %TEMP%\GoogleChromePortable\profile should be copied back to Data\profile to avoid losing any profile data changed last session, if copying the profile locally was on. %TEMP%\GoogleChromePortable\profile\Default\Cache should be excluded if it exists.
5) %TEMP%\GoogleChromePortable should be deleted.