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New: Kanri (Oct 9, '24), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, '24)
1,100+ portable packages, 1.1 billion downloads
No Ads November!, Please donate today
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a long time ago i hoped they do something like this and they finally have. It makes things 10 times easier when trying to figure out if u need to update your apps or not and when u have to it takes forever to chk out each apps page one at a time to update each app. Thank you for making a person like me a happy camper :D!!
Dalton M. Kadar
(Don't Mind Me I'm A Noob)
That's great news !
Congratulations and thank you for the hard work.
To add to the kudos, I installed it tonight as an update of the previous beta-4 installation. System is Windows 7 64-bit in French, the former platform in French and the new one is also installed in French, and I haven't found too many missing strings. Two programs needed updating and were updated successfully.
My issues so far are minor.
Issues
1. The themes seem listed by alphabetical order according to their English name, rather than with the posted (French) name. So themes are listed this way:
Noir - Bleu - Bronze...
which doesn't sound logical until one starts to think in English:
Black - Blue - Bronze...
Could it be possible to select strings in the user language, and then sort them accordingly? The more themes there are, the more important it becomes.
2. I am positive my eyes didn't trick me, but the choices written in the right-hand part of the menu appear in light grey whereas before they appeared in white. Going to "large font" doesn't solve the problem. Quite frankly, I MUCH preferred white letters. Especially on a dark background, give me as much contrast as possible!
Suggestions and ideas
1. I was glad to see that the update process is optional. When I read the description of this version, I was afraid it would be an automatic process happening at startup, whether I want it or not. I think the description should state clearly that the user remains in control. (If I missed that line in the description, my apologies.)
2. I think I would remove most or all the themes, leaving only a couple of well-defined and very different themes, say: Default (my favourite), Default Dark, Rainbow. The other themes (yours and eventually 3rd parties) would be downloaded separately. Right now, many of the themes are very similar (ex.: grey vs silver) and on my portable, the menu takes up the whole screen without any extra theme downloaded!
And as a bonus, it would solve de facto the sorting issue.
Thanks again.
Michel Gagnon
Michel Gagnon
Montréal (Québec, Canada)
These are mostly beta issues. The theme listing will be very different in the final release. If you check out the preview you'll see that there is a theme list and then a sublist for colors, making it much easier to navigate. They'll be alphabetical in French in the final. See the theme switcher here:
https://portableapps.com/node/24104
The themes aren't finalized. We'll probably lighten up the folder titles a bit.
The updater is indeed optional. It will be enabled on startup by default but easily set to manual in the Options window (under the Advanced tab which has a couple other Updater settings you can change). The automatic mode will check in the background on each startup for new apps silently and not interrupt you if there are no updates. But, as you said, some people prefer to only do it themselves manually, so there's a single checkbox to tick that will make it so.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Wow, feedback was quick indeed!
Title says it all. Just to keep you updated.
Michel Gagnon
Michel Gagnon
Montréal (Québec, Canada)
I've run across a couple of bugs on the updater in Windows 7 HOme Premium, Core I5 with a Radeon ATI HD4350 graphics card and 6gb of ram.
After copying over my programs to the Beta version and running the updater I ran into the following issues:
First, it will not do a complete download of Open Office 3.2. The error message is: Download Error: Transfer error on file
Second, when the updater finishes, the folder and tree displays in Explorer go black and after they come back, the display looses it's lock. Which is to say, windows float away from their original position, and in the case of this Reply window; in Firefox the text above the text box has covered the toolbars.
Third, while I can still run apps from the Portable Apps platform the folders and menus have frozen.
The full list of programs updated, except for Open Office, is:
Portable App Download App Type
ClamWin Portable 0.96.1 Rev 3 8 MB Security - Antivirus
ConvertAll Portable 0.5.0b 8 MB Utilities - Unit Conversion
Dia Portable 0.97.1-1 13 MB Graphics and Pictures - Diagramming
Foxit Reader Portable 4.0.0 5 MB Office - PDF Reader
FreeCommander Portable 2009.02a 2 MB Utilities - File Manager
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3.6.6 9 MB Internet - Web Browser
Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition 3.1 9 MB Internet - Email
Notepad++ Portable 5.7 4 MB Development - Text Editor
OpenOffice.org Portable 3.2.0 92 MB Office - Office Suite
Sudoku Portable 1.1.7.3 1 MB Games - Puzzle Game
SumatraPDF Portable 1.1 2 MB Office - PDF Viewer
uTorrent Portable 2.0.2 Build 19648 1 MB Internet - File Sharing
VLC Portable 1.1.0 Rev 2 20 MB Music and Video - Media Player
Whenever you have instances of display corruption, it's generally a PC issue. The updater doesn't do anything special in terms of display stuff (it's a basic app like the portableapps.com installers and backup utility), so it can't really do that on its own. I just ran it through an update of OO.o and it worked without issue on my Windows 7 box.
I would suggest checking your local hard drive for errors, doing a Windows update and ensuring all updates are applied, heading to ATI and ensuring you download the latest drivers, etc. Those are the usual steps. I've run into issues with misbehaving ATI drivers before (and Nvidia for that matter).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
...to the latest version !
Latest version is 3.3.3
Updater updates to 3.2.1.1
If not intentional, it's a small mistake in the updater.ini database
[edit: BTW, I got the PAU progress bar fixed, probably will meet in IRC these days to send you the source]
Formerly Gringoloco
Windows XP Pro sp3 x32
Fixed it in the database, thanks.
And send me the progress bar stuff as soon as you have them prepped. Or post it to that handy topic with all the utilities you created
EDIT: Chris let me know what you'd told him in IRC. I checked out the examples and see the issue. Turns out the docs for it are wrong. Or horribly misleading
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Everything seems to work fine, except when updating the app list, when the mouse gets invisible when hovering the platform (Wine1.2RC7, Ubuntu10.10), but's it's probably WINE's fault.
EDIT: Forget it, wine was being updated as it run and it's now fine. Although the systray button behaves strange: When I click it, a button appears in the taskbar, and then I must click the taskbar buton for the menu shows up. The updater is fine, it's updating 20 apps, but the loading screen has a white backgrounnd everywhere except whe the text is. Now it's to wait to it to update those 20 apps, OO.org included, with a less than 1 MB internet connection
Once again, thank you for your work.
I've seen that PAc Updater automatically installs applications in platform specified language. It's an interessant feature but with some problems.
Most of installers allow only two installation choices : "english" or "additionnal languages". Because additionnal languages take too much space, I often unchecked the option to keep installation folder to it's minimal size (USB drive).
So, from my point of view, there are 2 possible improvments :
- modify installers so that each language can be installed separatly (the best solution)
- use the same option as previous installation (I unchecked "additionnal language" during last installation, PAc Updater should "know" that and do the same during updates.
Thank you for reading this.
The ability to specify whether you want additional languages or not if you're platform is not in English is already built into the installers... they have 3 modes: automatic, always install additional languages, never install additional languages... and they're all in automatic mode right now (meaning if the installer is in english mode, they're left off; if the installer is non-English, they are included).
So, it is planned for 2.0, yes. It's going to be an advanced option in the Options dialog. The functionality to select that option and pass it through to the updater and individual installers is not yet completed, though.
We don't plan to go down to individual languages. We had been considering it, but, it gets quite complicated code and maintenance-wise. And drive sizes have increased drastically, to the point where it matters quite a bit less than it did a year or two ago. We only offer the language split-out on the large apps where it makes a big difference (see: GIMP, Pidgin) and have stopped doing it for sopme apps we used to (see: AbiWord).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thank you for your answer.
I'm waiting for the Beta 6 with categories before I upgrade (Note: Upgrade not update
) from Mod34. That's why I want to ask if the updater will have development test capability in it's advanced features. For obvious reasons I suspect not but also want to suggest such for a future (2.x) release.
Keep up the Good Work john
PortableApps.com Advocate
There are too many variables with DTs. Different servers, etc. Too much to track.
That said, it will soon be much easier for us to push new apps out, which will hopefully shrink our DT list. We've basically been waiting on a site update to the app directory.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Cool yeah I understand that.
Looking forward to what the next curtain reveals
PortableApps.com Advocate
I really like the new features! Ive been using PA for the last 4 or 5 years and have always tried to keep up to date... now its a whole lot easier! However, I do have a few issues...
-Someone else did mention this so this is more of an 'it happened again thing' after launching the updater the hover-selection on PA froze, nor could I launch another app interact with any part of the menu. Only happened once, restarted PA and could not get it to happen again. Everything mentioned previously is up to date.
-I know you said that there being a taskbar element in Win7 was partially fixed and only showed when the menu was open on screen... All I can say is nope. For me its there from when I start PA till when I exit PA, regardless of whether the menu is visible or not. The first time I remember seeing this is after updating to Beta4 from I'm not sure what version, but its still there.
-This is more of a request than a real bug. Ive been having issues with my ISP for some time which causes my connection to arbitrarily be, not disconnected, but I have no up or down speed and nor does it come back if I leave it, it just times out. I have to manually pause/start my downloads again for the downstream to be active again. Is there any way you can increase the robustness of the Updater to cater for connections being lost so I dont lose what has possibly been downloaded already, but rather it times out, moves onto the next download and tries to resume the failed DL (instead of starting again) either at the end of the update session or beginning of the next session? Adding this to online installers would also be useful - see next point.
-It never picked up that my Portable Java required an update. I've been unable to complete an update (I tried manually before, but the above mentioned network issue just kept happening).
-Loading the app icons on startup seems to be back to being slow... Beta 4 was blisteringly fast by comparison. Refresh app icons is still fast though.
Windows 7 (6.1 Build 7600) x64 Professional running with Aero
nVidia 8600gs m
1920*1080*32(pri), 1440*900*32(sec)
PAP Beta 5 Pre 2
Dark Blue theme
Running PA off a VHD
Just had another thing happen when looking at the PAP version.
Help > About > leave the About window open and change focus to Google Chrome (running as a PA ;-P) > Click the PAP Icon in the System Tray > PAP menu and About screen briefly gains focus before disappearing and Chrome regaining focus > did this several times > clicked on the Taskbar icon and the PAP menu gained stable focus without losing it.
Keep up the awesome work!
To hide it when the menu is closed you need the following line in PortableApps\PortableApps.com\Data\PortableAppsMenu.ini
[DisplayOptions]
Windows7TaskbarIcon=false
Thanks ratcatcher.
Is this something that doesnt get added / updated when updating Beta versions or is it left out by design?
It's a manually added option that John introduced in the last beta following a long discussion about taskbar versus system tray functionality in Windows 7.
I added it in the last beta and it's still there. Not sure if PortableAppsMenu.ini gets changed at all during the updgrade but if it does, obviously that line stays if it's there.
Regards
Nick
An extra option in PortableAppsMenu.ini along the lines of "Update=Daily|Weekly|Monthly|Off" that would run the updater silently and "Theme=Random" that would pick a new theme each time PortableApps starts would be nice.
I was also wondering if the upgrade from 1.6.1 was clean (as in no useless files left over from the previous installation)?
My first time trying the new version and I'm loving the new features. Great work!
(Sorry if this has already been covered somewhere.)
The updater will be automatically fired up on each launch of the PortableApps.com Platform silently in the background. It won't slow down launch as it will happen out of process after the menu fully loads. We may add in the ability to set timing differently.
The platform upgrades from 1.6.1 cleanly.
Glad you like it
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
John,
I remember you said that you needed to add an icon in the task bar because the default behaviour for icons in the System Tray is to only show icons when there is a notification. Could it be possible to define the icon so it is always in "Notification Mode"? That way, it would always appear in the System Tray – as long as PortableApps.com is running, that is. Or are there other side effects?
Michel Gagnon
Montréal (Québec, Canada)
Apps can't define themselves as always seen. You may be able to hack it so that you could make it seem like notifications happen and flash them, but that wouldn't be very user friendly. Most apps that are Win7 aware are taking this into account and staying in the taskbar (see: Skype) as the system tray is a 3rd class citizen now. So, we will appear in the taskbar on Win7 by default and give users the option of disabling that if they'd like.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
As per IRC, here it is.
I had the menu running and ran a game that changed the resolution...I haven't used the menu since...I just opened it to launch an app, normally it's at the bottom right of my left 1440x900 monitor, but now, because of the res change that happened its at the bottom in the middle of my right 1440*900 monitor and I can't click on anything or move it. Right-click options still work fine. The PC acts as if the menu isn't even there, as whenever I click somewhere, it goes to whatever app is behind the menu. I checked the ini and it still shows the correct "Bottom Right" positioning options.
I've had the "Platform moving" bug occur when pressing e.g. Ctrl+Alt+Right on Uni computers to switch workspaces... but I'm not on my superior Linux machine now, am I... so instead the Intel graphics driver does its silly rotate thing and it changes from 1600x1200 (I think) to 1200x1600. But I've never had it affect usability, I just put it back in the corner. (I did report it to John, he reckoned it wasn't very important to fix.) I'll test it today at Uni and see if it happens as you're reporting it in XP.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
I've tested it, and while the Platform still gets moved out of its wonted position, it still runs fine.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
I'm not reporting with XP as the title of my comment suggests. I'm reporting with Win7 Ult x64. And since it's not something I'd want to reproduce, I'm not even sure if I could replicate the circumstances again to do it...I'm just relatively sure of the cause.
I was stating that it didn't happen on XP. Thus that it was more likely to be a platform-specific bug.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
for the lulz, I decided to switch to japanese and other "non common" character using languages. all it gave me was instead of the normal japanese-like characters, it gave me random squares and such. This makes me think the unicode support is off as in not working correctly
edit: Where are my manners? Great software, ive been using PA for awhile now (less then a year) and still like seeing my friends stunned faces! but as a suggestion for a release after 2.0. maybe an option to change the whole computers theme temporarily? like the desktop background switcher already used?
hello all, looking in my ubuntu 10.04 with wine installed found that the PAP 2.0 beta 5 running the slides (this did not happen with PAP 2.0 beta 4). with virtualbox also discovered that PAP 2.0 beta 5 is compatible with the operating system windows flp (Windows Fundamentals For Legacy PCs) to 100% as windows flp has the same language of windows xp
jhon t.haller then you can add in your website that PAP is compatible with windows flp
windows flp is very little known but is a great alternative to windows 98 and 2k, this operating system is Microsoft's official
http://i31.tinypic.com/2zggj9k.png
http://i25.tinypic.com/29c875v.png
http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/fundamentals.aspx
PS: please excuse my English translator of google
Bugs:
~Windows XP likes to show PA.c Menu in open programs bar.
~I can see the pink tips of the Menu
~Some apps have a 404 update err (Warzone 2100 is one)
Bugs Fixed:
~Lager Icons mode doesn't cut off tails of letters (Thank You)
What i would like to see in bets 6:
-Categories
Great Work so far. This Rocks. Love the Updater.
Load the App and Play :evil:
Warzone 2100 confirmed "file not found" error.
... there is a typo (missing .paf).
At the moment I'm not able to fix it because my access to the database don't work any longer.
@John: If You are able to fix it I'll be able to help with database issues.
Paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!
Is anybody else seeing this? Previously the colours matched the colour scheme of the PortableApps.com web site. Now, on my monitor, the menu looks drab and the white letters have gone grey (making the Drive letter and free size difficult to read)
Hi, ...
Windows 7 Ultimate x64, 8 Gig Ram
PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 (Leo) Beta 5 on C:\LogicielsPortable\PortableApps
194 directorys inside = C:\LogicielsPortable\PortableApps\PortableApps
When starting Beta 5 it display a progressbar (probably to detect my 194 portable softwares), but when that progress bar is displayed, and "PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 (Leo) Beta 5" lost focus, it become not responding.
It show =
Description
Un problème a provoqué l’arrêt de l’interaction de ce programme avec Windows.
Chemin d’accès de l’application défaillante : C:\LogicielsPortable\PortableApps\PortableApps\PortableApps.com\PortableAppsPlatform.exe
Signature du problème
Nom d’événement du problème : AppHangB1
Nom de l’application: PortableAppsPlatform.exe
Version de l’application: 1.999.5.0
Horodatage de l’application: 4c4010b8
Signature de blocage: c828
Type de blocage: 0
Version du système: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Identificateur de paramètres régionaux: 3084
Signature de blocage supplém. 1: c828455794b40cea11762bb3c5446cc9
Signature de blocage supplém. 2: e7cc
Signature de blocage supplém. 3: e7cc8a2ce897618fdb1e50ed07d0e89a
Signature de blocage supplém. 4: c828
Signature de blocage supplém. 5: c828455794b40cea11762bb3c5446cc9
Signature de blocage supplém. 6: e7cc
Signature de blocage supplém. 7: e7cc8a2ce897618fdb1e50ed07d0e89a
I notice that the main window is still not resizable, and is more than 600 pixels high, even when the app list is mostly empty. Will the final be resizable and/or scrollable?
I noticed that if after checking for updateable apps, you get a modal dialog you have to dismiss, which is a little annoying.
I would also like to be able to see more information about each app, e.g. installed size, when installed, last used, updates available, etc.
Thanks.
Bob Bagwill
I saw a mention about how on Windows 7 the PA.c menu forces the taskbar to rise up from hidden to shown status. This is not a repeat of that bug.
I am currently using this on a Windows 7 Laptop (Ultimate x64 on a Compaq 2710p Tablet) and I see no way to minimize the menu to the system tray like I had it doing before. It just sits there, always in my taskbar (I do not auto-hide the taskbar, so I am not sure if this is related or not).
Am I missing something, perhaps a setting I need to (re)-add to the .ini file to allow for auto-hiding PA.c menu to the system tray? Or has that feature been temporarily disabled for the same reasons that the show taskbar bug is manifesting?
Also, my heartfelt THANKS! for the app updater. That is a pure life saver for me, I was severely bummed when the old PA.c updater app stopped working....
Excellent work, John and the rest of the crew! Kudos all around!
__
JG
The option is the exact same option as in 1.6.1 and as detailed on the page. There is a bug in the current version where the taskbar will STILL show while the menu is visible and then hide when you minimize it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Well, I 'minimized' PA.c menu, and it went to the system tray like it should - but the taskbar icon is still showing.
Doing this on both of my systems (and both, interestingly enough, are Windows 7 Ultimate x64 systems, although with completely different hardware).
__
JG
Here is a link to the pic of my desktop showing how the menu has been minimized and yet how the taskbar icon shows.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/snvRDuJ4INRvxkahaRuOVA?feat=directlink
(Warning - I have a dual monitor system, and the original size of the pic was 3360 * 1050, even in Picasaweb this is still a pretty large pic to look at, so if you have a slow connection, don't click it unless you want to wait for a bit for it to load).
__
JG
Were you talking about this?
https://portableapps.com/support/portable_apps_suite#disablewin7taskbar
I assume, then, that I need to add this back to the .ini file, eh?
Sorry about being obtuse, forgot that 1.6.1 was that 'current stable' release, and was racking my brain on how to get that back since this had overwritten it....)
__
JG
In its previous incarnation, the updater showed the whole list of installers from SF.
You could use it to both update installed apps or install ones that you didn't have yet.
My vision was that this approach would be used to replace the whole Suite thing - so all you'd need to do is DL the menu, and then use the Updater/Setup function to automate installation of the apps you want. Ideally, you could even have preset groups of apps to act the same way as suites, except more customizable - and it would eliminate the need for JTH to maintain and update suites.
The advantage of this approach is for people without limitless bandwidth or uptime. Apps would download in series instead of having to wait for a giant suite bolus, apps would be installed in the current version the first time (since the suites almost always had some apps outdated).
Sure, the new one is simpler, but IFO prefer control over simplicity.
I do have an idea how to use the updater to DL suites, but I need to test some stuff first... GBTY
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
OK, I worked this out, and it works OK.
The updater looks for the version in the appinfo.ini file, and compares it to the DB, I presume - right?
So, for first time users, you could create "Suites" that would install only the App folder and a simplified appinfo.ini with the version set to 0.0.0.0. Then when they run the installer, they would be able to select which apps they want to install when they want.
So, for example, if the suite included Notepad++, the initial suite DL would only install this:
X:\PortableApps\Notepad++Portable\App\Appinfo\appinfo.ini
The contents of the ini file would be
Klar?
So a suite would only need one of these simple folder structures and appinfo.ini files for each app in the suite. Total DL for these Suite App placeholders would be in the kilobytes! Also, suites would not need to be changed when apps are updated, only when adding or removing Suite App placeholders.
Once the Suite App placeholders are installed, the user would only need to run the Updater from the Manage Apps to start the install process.
The Suite App placeholders can be removed using the Uninstall function, just like any app.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
It may also be useful to use this approach to add suites of apps to your existing collection - just have to make sure that the Suite App placeholder won't overwrite previously installed versions.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
Basically, both of those features are coming in an upcoming release.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
Well done. You've done your homework
Shane Thompson
shanet[at]people[dot]net[dot]au
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut ali
We all know some people like to run PA off their Harddrive, or somewhere other than the root of the flashdrive. So my suggestion is, if the menu is running, have the app installers realize this, and install to that menu.
For example. I installed the menu to a folder called PA on my desktop. So if the menu is already running, it would be nice for the app to know to install to "C/.../Desktop/PA/PortableApps" as opposed to me having to specify it.
Simplifying daily life through technology
But the idea is that you install it to a PORTABLE media, so it's PORTABLEAPPS, instead of applications that sit on your hard drive and make no apparent changes to the system apart from sitting there. You would get better performance by installing the windows installer version. It is therefore impractical to do so, but it is nice that people love PA that much that they use it without a portable media
Shane Thompson
shanet[at]people[dot]net[dot]au
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut ali
I mainly use PA on my PC for programs I want to use, but I wont be using them enough to warrant a local install. Or, sometimes, I just need to use a program once, then delete it. And there are other programs I just want to try out.
Simplifying daily life through technology
If you use the menu to install the apps via the "Manage Apps>Install a New App" function, it will automatically install the apps to that menu. On the older versions, it's "Options>Install a New App".
I have several menus installed on my HDD to different folders (for use, development, and testing of 2b5) and as long as I use the built in function, I never have to specify.
If you run the installer separately, by directly running the paf.exe, then you need top specify.
You will make things easier if you have only one place where you store your installers.
Also, it's better not to install it to the desktop, for several reasons, including the file path length limitations of OpenOffice.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
C:\PortableApps is highly recommended over your Documents or Desktop folder. Either of those may make the path too long for some apps (OpenOffice.org). And C:\PortableApps will be found by the installer looking for an installed platform.
Incidentally, you can use Options - Install a New App and it will automatically go to the correct location.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
How about where you're running more than one copy of the PA.c menu? It would be good if the installer found all of these and offered a pull-down list so you could select which you wanted to install to.
For instance I run two copies: one on D: (which is a partition on my main fixed HDD) and the other on P: (which is a USB stick).
And in reply to the person who said there's no point in running PA.c from a fixed HDD, there are actually LOTS of good reasons why one might want to do this in preference to installing standard versions, such as:
1. Keeps a whole bunch of applications together within the same folder hierarchy.
2. Easy to move to a different location (same machine, different machine, USB stick, etc) as there are no registry entries to copy).
3. Easy to back up.
4. Easy to duplicate.
5. Testing.
And many more.
Regards
Nick
There are quite strong technical limitations against doing that; additionally, if you're doing that, the easiest way to manage it is to use the method John mentioned above of running the installer from the Platform (except it's actually now Manage Apps - Install a New App; I think John temporarily forgot about the addition of that new button!). Then the path will be filled in automatically and correctly.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
@ratcacher - sorry for butting in
@Chris - I, and I'm sure others, would like to know what the strong technical limitations are.
My wife and I often share one PC and will have 3 menus running: hers from her USB flash drive, mine from my SD card and my utilities one on d:\portableapps (the second partition on the fixed HDD).
The technical limitation is that NSIS just doesn't support it. To do it would require duplicating the directory selection page in some other way - including getting the right control, which isn't possible with InstallOptions, though possibly with nsDialogs - and then modifying it somewhat. It's functionality which would be used by very few people, and there's already a better workaround: install via the Platform.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
@ RogerL I think he meant limitations to the unusual installer request, NOT to running more than one instance.
I'm pretty sure that Chris was only answering this question:
"It would be good if the installer found all of these and offered a pull-down list so you could select which you wanted to install to."
since his answer ended with "...there's already a better workaround: install via the Platform."
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
agreed, need to think more before posting!
Right now the installer only has to look in one location for an existing platform. If it had to search a whole drive for it, it eould take a lot longer.
Besides that there is the fact what Chris said.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
I like having the same versions everywhere. Ideally, I would be able to have sync'ed versions of essential software and files on my desktop, netbook, thumbdrive and cloud drive.
Bob Bagwill
Hi John,
so far I used the IPAP theme but now it doesn't fit to the
latest platform version. So it needs to be adapted to this platform version.
Who is responsible for this theme?
Regards
PortableUser2009
Hi,
given that the theme you mention is not an official theme, it is not that likely that John will just happen to know who created it.
If you downloaded it from this site, then your best option would be to use the site's search facility (in the top right corner of every page) to search for the term ipap, and find the thread that you obtained it from. You could then perhaps post into that thread to ask the author if he is planning to update the theme to the new spec, but, also be aware that the new spec may not yet be finalised, since this is still beta software, so it is very possible that the author may not plan to release an update until after PAP 2.0 goes final.
Is there a duplicate of the official PA theme since the one in beta 5 is way off the mark?
Here's the report of what I mentioned yesterday and the day before.
Uninstall an app; while it is uninstalling, switch to a different window (I'm fairly sure that that's the part which triggers it). Once uninstallation is completed, the status message of what it's deleting disappears, but the window itself - "Uninstalling App Name Portable. Please wait..." remains (with the hourglass cursor, which is by design, I gather). The window stops being application-modal, so the Platform is usable, but the two windows remain linked together.
I think it's just that once it's lost focus, the code which was used to hide it stops working.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
The updater downloads incredibly slowly. Does this default to the nearest sourceforge mirror?
I am in Australia and I never use the Australian mirror because it is usually horribly slow. I normally download from Taiwan or Japan as their mirrors are very good. Is there any way to define the mirror it downloads from? If not I would like to put it forward as a feature request.
Other than that, going well so far.
I cant replicate this problem on my Win XP Home 32bit netbook.
I'll try Win7 Ult 32bit later and post back what i find.
Just a few things. The Beta is working well on my end, but:
1. I noticed that the really nice violet theme from Beta 4 has been changed. The 'violet' entry is still there of course, but the colour is now different to the old violet, and I personally think the new violet is not as good looking as the old one. Is there any chance we can get a 'classic violet' returning in the next beta? I tried fooling with the ini file of the new violet in an attempt to get the old colour back, but without success.
2. Ditto for the Beta 4 default theme - the red colour of the default Beta 4 theme would also be nice to have back. For me, the red of the new default theme isn't nearly as nice as the old one.
3. I used the updater, and it said I needed to update to rev 2 of VLC. I let it do so, but I was sure I already had rev 2 installed, so I downloaded the VLC installer again and compared it to the one I already had (the one I had used to install the program to the drive). Both copies were identical, so I don't know why the updater decided that something needed updating.
I used to have a sig...until one of the mods ate it
This has really been getting to me lately. For all the recent versions of PAP, I was always wondering why just scrolling through the app list has to take 100% of the cpu, and because of it, scrolling very slow.
But now, for the new 2.0 beta 5 it really seems to be even worse, although the strange thing is that from time to time the menu scrolls that fast
Formerly Gringoloco
Windows XP Pro sp3 x32
Confirmed.
Following a smooth but very slow scrolling with 100% CPU utilization. One move the mouse wheel stretched to 3-5 seconds.
ps Apologies for the Google Translator.
This topic is over 2 years old and applies to a very old beta. The scroll engine has changed significantly since then. If you are having issues now, please open a new topic.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Great job! PortableApps works great on my Windows machine, but when I run it on Wine under Linux, I noticed a few bugs:
* On the updater, the names of the applications will not show up.
* There is a black background on the icons in the Menu.
* Check Drive for Errors is greyed out.
* While updating Google Chrome Portable, Wine popped up a Program Error dialog box that said that GoogleChromePortable_5.0.375.99_online.paf.exe had encountered a serious error and had closed. While that may have been an error on my machine, the updater continued and assummed it had been installed correctly.
Looking forward to 2.0!
I have some observations on your comments.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
I don't know where to put this comment, so I'm sorry if this isn't the right place.
Could you add support for the Home/End keys? It are super-useful to navigate in the apps list.
Also, the possibility to enlarge the menu would be a great addition for those of us who have large screens.
Thanks!
Additionally I would really appreciate Hotkey navigation (even more than categories). Just as in Windows folders, just typing the first letter (or even better first few letters) to highlight the app I'm looking for.
That would immensely speed up jumping to apps (especially as scrolling is awkwardly slow right now).
Maybe it's just my setup as I use a whole lot of dev-apps on a 1,8" portable hdd (partly as repostitory for setting up my pendrives) so my list is kinda huge. Right now, scrolling to the bottom of the list of about 150 apps takes nearly 10 seconds.
Thanks too!
I've experienced this with Pidgin update thath was released. For default, the apps are installed in X:\PortableApps\<AppNamne>Portable, but if you use another folder name that isn't the default (eg. X:\PortableApps\<AppName>, X:\PortableApps\<AppName> Portable, etc.) these apps will be shown in the PortableApps Suite but the PortableApps Updater will ignore these aapps and will show "Currently you apps are up-to-date."
The updater only works with apps in their intended folders. The AppID corresponds to the directory name. And there's no real reason to change them. So I'd suggest renaming your folders back to their standard names and it'll work fine.
The limitation is actually in the PA.c Installer itself, as it only supports passing a destination of the PortableAppsPath, not the actual install location, and appends its AppID onto the end. In order to support custom folders, we'll need to update the Installer to support it and then update every package of every app currently released.
In the near future, it'll be much easier to stick to the proper names as the installations will be more automated and automatically install to the standard locations. You'll still be able to manually change them, but it will cause the issue you are seeing.
We'll probably alter the installer to take into account outlier cases like this sometime soon, but for now, only standard install locations are supported.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Analyzing the source code of PortableApps Suite I've found a few code lines that search all X:\PortableApps subfolders searching the "AppInfo.ini" file. The AppID is present on this file. The updater may be use this routine to detect custom folders and recognize AppID trough "AppInfo.ini". With this the updater will work normally with custom folders, not?
Again: "The limitation is actually in the PA.c Installer itself, as it only supports passing a destination of the PortableAppsPath, not the actual install location, and appends its AppID onto the end. In order to support custom folders, we'll need to update the Installer to support it and then update every package of every app currently released."
It is not a limitation of the updater, it is a limitation of the PA.c Installer. We simply CAN'T tell the Pidgin Portable installer to install to X:\PortableApps\Pidgin. Nothing in the updater can workaround the issue (without getting VERY ugly). The easiest thing to do for now is to simply rename your folders back to the proper AppIDs.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
With the release of PortableApps.com Installer 2.0.4 a directory can be passed by command line. Custom folders should work now in a new release of PA.c Updater?
If you just use the installers the way they are designed, and use the Install a New App function from the menu, so that the apps are installed using the correct folder names, everything works fine and is very very easy to deal with.
This is like complaining that Windows doesn't work right if I rename my "Windows" folder to something else!
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
Currently I'm beta testing a File Manager that only recognize 16bit folder names and sometimes crash with with the PIDGIN~1 or the 16bit folder names abreviation. Renaming it to Pidgin turn it accessible to the File Manager.
Great work and thank you for all your effort!!
While updating all my apps I came across a few things:
1)The installer continues with the installation after download without flagging that for some installers (skype, chrome, etc.) there is still internet connection required during installation. An option window whether to install updates or not would help!
2) after having no internet connection the installer installed bits of chrome&skype, but didn't download anything(b/c it couldn't) broke the apps and flagged them as updated rather than failure to update.
Many thanks
You can not configure the proxy to the PortableApps.com Updater program and this does not work in places where there is no direct Internet connection ....
Just observe .....
It automatically uses the proxy configuration of the PC. IE's proxy configuration, actually. If the PC itself doesn't have internet access (for things like Windows Update, etc) chances are there is no internet access to be gotten on that PC. Unless this is some unplanned for configuration?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I mean, I sit on the computer where it was not possible to set the IE (Firefox is used), it could only be resolved by manual settings ... I try to go to a machine which is normally in IE.
Thank you for Portable Apps, use it everyday. My kids can't believe what I have on the flash drive.
Twice now the updater has said there are two updates. I go ahead and run the update and the first app update fails and the second one installs normally. Just happened with uTorrent and VLC. uTorrent did not install but VLC did. Reran updater and it still would not update uTorrent. Went to the uTorrent page and downloaded it and updated with no problem.
Updater did not tell me I needed to update Java.
Using Windows 7 Home HP Desktop 8GB 64 bit
The only no standard thing is I have everything in C:\PortableApps\PortableApps\
Firefox, Toucan, and VLC installed correctly using the updater.
Thank You again, Have a good day and a better tomorrow.
jeb
The updater doesn't yet support Java as it's not, technically, an app. It's a CommonFiles plugin, so the updater doesn't see it yet. It will in the next beta.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hi John, there is some way to put (for example) a checkbox in options that when you check it, the program ask to close (close process tree) all the programs called from Portableapps menu and then eject ?
cause I did it using other suit, but I back to use portableapps and I miss this feature
Rocking for the One who is the Rock
That feature is coming. It has to be handled properly, though. Every other software implementation I've seen does it incorrectly and can cause issues. Our code is nearly complete and will work for both PA.c Format apps and non.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
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