Why do many of the development versions have broken links, I can't test them if I can't download them. I do understand that the one guy had his sites attacked by some hackers, which is messed up. I hate hackers they mess things up for everyone then people like us suffer the consequences.
I guess I sound like a prick but that isn't what I intended, I really am a nice guy. I just hope that somebody had downloaded the development versions of the apps before the links were broken and could share them with me, especially for GNU IceCat Portable, and EyeOS if that is possible.
Or if newer versions of those will be available in the future. Thank you, and best regards.
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as I posted in the GNU IceCat dev test topic I'm no longer compiling icecat on windows, I forgot to make note in that topic, for that I'm sorry for not getting to that sooner.
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
I always hoped that someone would port it to windows, I enjoyed using it in Zenwalk and a few other distro's like slax as an alternative to Firefox that doesn't really focus on security by default though it can be setup that way but that is left to the end user with FireFox, where IceCat does all that work for you out the box plus is tweaked for extra security. Thanks at least I know what happened to it, I am still getting used to this place and portable apps so I probably made a few mistakes myself, best regards.
"If it isn't broke don't fix it"
There's hardly any difference between Firefox and Icecat. It's mainly branding (since they can't use the FF name and logo) and not suggesting closed source plugins (which means no flash, etc). Other than that, it's like two minor settings you can easily change.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
This does raise a good point IMO, actually two:
As most of you regulars probably know by now I'm not a huge fan of forums for using for anything other than discussions. It's overly convoluted to know if I'm viewing the most current thread for a development application (often there are several where projects get started, then dropped, the other developers take over). It would be nice if there were a more concise list of the current apps in development. The only problem with this is that there are so many third-party or unofficial developers, that it might become burdensome to maintain.
The second point is that it would be nice if there could a centralized place where developer files could be hosted so that we could avoid all the dead links. Again, easier said than done, because who should provide this space?
Perhaps once the flood gates open here then many of the developers will be able to get back to developing some of the apps that have fallen by the wayside. I guess time will tell.
@Darkbee https://portableapps.com/development/test
Like you said, however, it's burdensome to maintain. Especially due to my next point.
@tukbuild The reason a lot of the links in the beta testing forum are dead or are not updated is simply the fact that development tests are not officially supported. Any third-party developer can post a development test release and then lose motivation to update it and even possibly delete it from his/her host. There are good and bad things that come from this. The bad points you've already noted, but it can be good because it allows for a lot of projects to be released to testing without needing approval of anyone here (of course, it'll be taken down if it is spam or an illegal package).
Nice, isn't that just a static page though? Static pages have no place being bed-mates with dynamic data.
Anyway, I appreciate the challenges of managing a free-flowing and ever expanding project as this one.
Thanks for your input.
Chris and I have discussed once or twice what we could do to have that page updated automatically (and have the beta testing forum be more organized and clean). Regarding the underlying mechanics of the PortableApps.com website, none of that is likely to happen soon, unfortunately.