John T. HallerI don't think we want to go the shovelware route for suites. Some of the illegal portable software sites have 200+ apps in them. But you're only going to use maybe 10 or 20 of them anyway. Random utilities you have no use for, 10 apps that do the exact same thing, etc. They're basically shovelware suites and they do that to force you to download all the apps so they can count that one download as 200 downloads.
If a use does want to add all apps, it will be easier in the 2.0 release with the updater. But I don't think we'll go the route of having a downloadable suite with everything in it. Or, if we do, it'll be optional (as all of our suite apps have always been) and probably updated less frequently. Either way, this is a separate discussion from ending Win9x support and doing a legacy suite, so if you'd like to discuss it further, let's do a forum post.
Done.
No offense, but... the shovelware argument has been my stance against the regular suites all along. I don't believe they've ever been a good choice for anybody, and that would even assume they were kept up to date. That they aren't kills it. To each his own, but the two or three times I've set up a PortableApps.com flash drive for somebody, I've always installed the platform and then the apps I thought that person would use. I always keep the installers for the apps I use archived for just this purpose. Not saying you're gaming the downloads that way, and I don't believe that at all, but just the bit about stuff people don't need. Not going to single any app included out... well, Sudoku is an easy target because it creates broken puzzles... and Firefox is an easy target because having the latest version is important.
That being said, I think moving forward with the Updater, I believe the best course of action is just the platform with nothing in it, and a first-run wizard which suggests apps and downloads them. For example a Choose Your Browser screen that offers a choice between Firefox and Chrome with information on each. And then the choice between OpenOffice and AbiWord. And after the big choices, a friendlier updater which shows the best of the other apps (best as in, most useful to most folks) and lets you pick and choose. Once you're done, it downloads them all.
The only advantage I see to suites is when hardware vendors preload a flash drive. And then there's no way for them to stay current.
Side note, but it's relevant: Proxies. Will the updater use Portable Firefox's, or IE's? Or will it just try to directly connect? Because this could be important (though I, one who deals with a proxy, will just do all installation/maintenance at home where I don't deal with one).
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We're actually going to be focusing on using the updater for selection of apps. And the suites themselves will be kept more up to date once 2.0 drops. I've just completed an automated build process that builds them in 12 languages, so we can easily build them and set them all to upload off-hours for release the next day. Once the updater is included, even if a suite is out of date, the app will be updated on first run.
The suites are mainly because people want them. We've never used them to game the system because users have always been able to download the platform alone and then add individual apps. The suites are always a choice, and we just do a simple selection of basic apps that most users would need along with two tiny games. Some people like being able to download the base set. Some people like having everything included and then installing it to multiple drives. And some people only download suites and don't know the platform is a separate thing. The suites are also handy for magazine distribution.
On proxies, it will use the PC's proxy settings (what you're calling IE's settings, but which are actually OS-level settings and used by many apps). Users will also be able to manually set them if they so choose (though this may be a 2.0.1 release and not in 2.0 since nearly all users will just use the current PC's settings).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
How nice would it be to visit a single page, check off all the apps you want, press a button and have them all downloaded and installed in one shot?
There are some issues with the approach in terms of build-your-own on the server. First off, we'd have to pay for bandwidth for it, since we couldn't do that on SourceForge. On our current host, that bandwidth would approach US$20,000 a month. Second, most of the installs then wouldn't support upgrades, which is something we're keen on. All of our suite support upgrades from previous suite versions as well as upgrades from previous build your own setups, which requires per-app custom code. Finally, the downloaded suites would then not be digitally signed, which means they would display the "Unknown Publisher" screen on Windows along with the scary red-X graphic, which would be a turn-off to many users.
We'll have a similar feature in the platform itself that will approximate this, though, and will work around all of these features. It'll be debuting in a 2.0 Beta shortly.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
How would a build-your-own script be so hard? I mean (in theory) you still have all the apps and the Platform, on SourceForge, as they are. This script, I guess would be written in PHP or something, would let you check off the apps you want, and then display neat info like filesize, download size, download speed (complete with a drop-box where you select your connection and it changes the time), and installed space. When you hit download, it downloads the Platform and generates a script, which the Platform uses to download and install all the apps you've chosen. Might require some work to put together, but I don't really see how it would stop you from using SourceForge or cost more money.
Of course, it's a moot point since the updater will pretty much do that anyway, as I understand it. I suppose it'll be built into the Platform, like Backup and Restore? Perhaps it could offer to run if you launch the Platform with no apps installed. Platform installs, offers to run. You run it, Platform has no apps, updater offers to get some. The updater should know what the latest version of any app is, how currently? An hour or two after the app's been updated? So it's checking a database somewhere that gets updated when the apps are updated. Immediately? So it's looking on SourceForge itself and pulling version information. (Or something else?) Either way, this should negate the build-your-own-suite page idea.
And I forgot that IE just uses OS-level Internet options. It's easy to forget because I always get to it via IE. And because the first thing I have to do with Portable Firefox in my environment is get those proxy settings and copy the proxy URL to the clipboard for pasting in Firefox. (Speaking of which, a neat plugin for Portable Firefox that should be distributed here should disable Firefox's proxy settings and make Portable Firefox use the host computer's proxy setting. That would save me a bit of effort, if I could install this via a .paf.exe after installing Firefox, so I could just get up and going. (They use IE 6 here, it's terrible, but at least next time I know I can just go to the Control Panel to get to Internet Options, not necessarily IE.)
I like what you are saying, but I think it would be way harder to carry out than it sounds. Are you talking about something like this?
Build Slax
http://www.slax.org/build.php
The PAF installers are interactive. Even if the process could be handled with files hosted at Sourceforge, how would the system know about things like user preferences? (path, installed components, other options)
Speaking of proxies, have you seen John's Proxy Get Utility?
New: Proxy Get Utility
https://portableapps.com/node/867
I like the idea of just using the updater to install apps. I never install the suites as published, because they generally don't contain the latest and greatest versions of the apps, and the single file download is too big.
That being said, I don't CURRENTLY use the updater for the initial installation of PortableApps, because it's way faster for me to grab them individually using the DownloadThemAll! accelerator that is offered here.
That brings me to two questions about the new built-in updater:
1. Is it possible to include a DL accelerator in the code so that we can get decent DL speeds?
2. Is it possible to set up the updater with "collections" of apps? This would be similar in concept to different suites. I know that in the current updater, you can manually check off the apps you want, and then start the whole DL and install process. I envision an extra feature, where you can click a button to automatically select the apps you want in the updater, and then start it normally to download and install that collection.
So, say on the first screen, there's a series of buttons, for example "Basic Collection", "Music Collection", "Webmaster Collection", "Office Collection", whatever, and when you click on the button, it selects a preconfigured set on the next screen. You should also be able to prune your selections on the 2nd screen.
In my example "Music Collection" might include:
Whereas "Webmaster Collection" could include
By doing it this way, you could get the bundling aspects of suites without having to maintain them separately, and you would get no additional bandwith hits.
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Download accelerators don't increase download speeds on sites that can upload at your maximum download speed or greater, such as SourceForge. Typically they just route your traffic through high-speed servers, some of which might compress the data that your accelerator decompresses, but a download server will never in fact increase your Internet connection speed.
Also why aMSN instead of Pidgin? Just curious, since Pidgin can do MSN (can't it?) as well as Yahoo and AIM (can aMSN?). Personally, I hate instant messaging in all its vile forms (LOL) but I'm just curious about that.
I do like the 'presets' idea, though.
I think you're thinking of a different thing by download accelerator, for slow connections like dialup; download accelerators work by downloading from several places in the file at once, keeping several streams open. Not all servers support it (my old host didn't, nor pausing, having just switched I'm now on a server which does), but most do. This means that you can download a number of chunks at a time (I think 5 is the default in DownThemAll!, but it allows up to 10), and it does speed things up in almost all situations, due to the way TCP/IP works. A single connection can't really use the whole connection fully, having several does - illogically if you don't understand all the details - speed it up.
Pidgin can cope with MSN, but it can't do audio/video with the MSN protocol whereas aMSN... can (also "webcam support" as a feature on the front page)? can't? I'm not entirely clear about it, there seems to be a bit of mixed information.
"Presets" is something John has in his mind.
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Yes, you're right, I had in mind that Google program, and Opera comes with one now, too. I knew he meant DTA and even named it, but at some point I got off track and started thinking about something else.
I hear what you're saying, and I believe you know what you're talking about, but I used to use DTA, and I didn't really see speed increases. It did make it easier to pull in a lot of files at once. The biggest draw for me while on dialup was pause/resume. I haven't used DTA since going to DSL, haven't needed it. Sorry for the confusion.
Stupid question that probably belongs in another topic, but are MSN and Xbox Live the same thing, in terms of messaging? Xbox Live would always tell me that I couldn't sign into Messenger (MSN logo), but when I looked into it, it said I had to activate my Xbox Live account to be used with MSN. I did so, didn't take long -- and it signed me in, but I'm not sure if that means now I could be contacted via MSN, but to do so I think I'd have to give out my email address, as opposed to my Gamertag, which I really don't want to do. Seems like instant messaging used to be based around handles, but Microsoft wants to use your email address. So I'm left confused. See, I'd thought I'd be able to use Pidgin to IM Xbox Live users (and have PC users IM me on Xbox Live) but it turns out that's not the case.
... of the last version of the stand alone PortableApps.com Updater https://portableapps.com/node/16779. I don't know if John has included this feature in the upcoming version too.
My main intention for creating the updater was to get an easy way to get an actual and up-to-date version of the suite with all the Apps I want (thats why the first and somer later version was called 'online setup').
The discussion about 'developer' an some other special editions is as old as the updater itself. My answer is the same today as before: 'If there is anybody willing to take over the task maintaining the database and the needed changes we can do this'.
Paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!
Glad to know JTH is thinking about the presets.
BTW, my lists are only suggestions, not intended to dis Pidgin!
You'll notice I tossed in a few that were still in the dev test phase, but who knows, they may be released before PAP 2.0, what with our new Release Team...
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