I am trying to make portable firefox open pdf files with pdfXchange viewer. I have tried to follow the instructions on the site, added pdfXchange as an app for pdfs, and it worked. Then to test it, I moved the whole directory structure to another directory (relative path between firefox and pdfXchange remained the same) and it stopped working. Is there any way to make it work with relative paths?
Another thing that might cause this problem, is that I am not using the PortableApps menu thingie, I start "FirefoxPortable.exe" directly. Is this the reason? I mean, I am using the portable firefox launcher, but not the general multi-application thing.
Also, I noticed that your instructions make reference to "File Types" inside the "Content tab", which I could not find in my version of Firefox (3.6.3) instead I went to "applications" tab and there set the pdfXchange handler for pdf. Am I doing something wrong or has Firefox changed since the instructions where written?
Here is pasted from the instructions:
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The setting to do this in Firefox Portable works just like it does in a regular install of Firefox:
1. Click Tools and then Options from the menu
2. Select the Content tab
3. Within the File Types section, click the Manage button
4. In the list of types, select the one you wish to edit and click the Change Action button (if you don't see the type you want, see the note below)
5. Select the "Open them with this application" radio button and then click Browse
6. Select the portable app you'd like to open this file type with (example: SumatraPortable.exe)
7. Click Ok. Click Close. And click OK to close all the windows.
Now, when you click on a file of that type in Firefox, it will open it in the portable app you selected. The PortabableApps.com Launcher takes care of any needed changes as you move between PCs.
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Everything is drive letter based. You can't change the path that an app is installed in, it won't work anymore, even if the relative paths between the two are the same.
You install both to a flash drive (or similar portable drive). You set FFP to use your selected PDF. You move them PC to PC. The drive letter changes. The launcher will update that. Firefox Portable will keep using any app you want to open PDFs.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thank you for your reply. I have tried that, it still doesn't work.
I have put everything in a dir called "PortablePrograms", in c:, I ran firefox and went to tools/options/applications/pdfFile and there entered the path to the pdf reader. It ran fine. Then I copied everything to another drive (n:), closed all applications, renamed the original directory on c:, started firefox from n: and when trying to open a pdf file from a link I got the following message:
C:\DOCUME~1\[....].pdf could not be opened, because the associated helper application does not exist. Change the association in your preferences.
Everything else in Firefox works, including add-ons, history, setting, button bar etc. It's just the external program association that does not (but then, everything worked even before when I was just changing paths).
I just tried it and it worked just fine for me doing the exact same process. If you've already been moving things around and changing paths, then things like your helper apps files in FF may already be borked and may be unrecoverable in terms of portablization.
Try starting from scratch using the latest releases of both FFP and Sumatra PDF or Foxit and install to X:\PortableApps\AppNamePortable for both as recommended. Then be sure any system PDF plugins are disabled in FF. Then try and open a PDF and when asked go all the way through to Other and then Browse. Select SumatraPDFPortable.exe and click OK. Then close everything and move the drive to another PC or manually change it's drive letter. (or copy the entire X:\PortableApps directory to C:\PortableApps and rename X:\PortableApps to X:\PortableApps2 as I did in my successful test)
You can reset your helper apps in Firefox by deleting the file FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\mimeTypes.rdf
For future reference, portable apps are intended to be installed to a single location (preferably X:\PortableApps so it'll automatically work with our installers, etc) on a portable device and moved about between PCs. You can also install it locally to C:\PortableApps and keep it where it is. You can't randomly move directories about, though, as it is unsupported and will break quite a few things in quite a few apps.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John,
Is it planned to add this feature in the future ? I mean, instead of drive letter replacement, why not path replacement ?
And if all PortableApps bundle are using Portable Launcher from now, it could be "easily" implemented, right ?
Do you mean it won't be possible to have two distinct platforms in the future ?
Thanks for your help
Guillaume
On my list is slightly more useful tools for doing it - LastAppDir and LastDataDir, like LastDrive - and a value to
notify the user that it won't work and stop, (b) notify the user that some features may not work or (c) work. All this will still require implementation by the developer, especially making it work.
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Great ! Thank you for your answer and, more generally speaking, for your work on this "universal" launcher