If my sources are to be trusted, the next version of the PortableApps.com platform will be released this month. So which feature are you most excited to see in the next release?
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The next release will be a minor version bump with improvements to themes, custom colors, some troubleshooting utilities (easily get at environment vars, system info, etc for troubleshooting) and a few other bits. I've been unable to work much the last week due to system issues. New graphics card arrives Monday or Tuesday and I hope that is the source of the issue. Otherwise I need a new PC but don't have the money for it at present.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Even though it's only minor, the ability to have custom colors for the theme has been on my wish list for a long time. I'm also interested to see what you mean by "troubleshooting utilities". I hope your computer issues get resolved soon! You've helped me a lot with my computer issues so it's only fair yours get fixed! Best of luck!
The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
The utilities are more for us when we help users troubleshoot issues. It can let us know their installed path, OS, installed apps, settings, environment variables, and other information all in one location. That way users don't have to try to figure it out independently.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hello, I thought I should mention, I made a patch to add Custom Colours which worked quite well in my own testing a while back (for 2.0 Pre‑Release 4.2), but by the time I felt it was ready for your attention I had just recently been informed that you didn't accept unified diff patches (you either said this was due to lack of a good Windows program for applying them, or lack of experience with such programs, I don't remember which). If this has changed and you now accept unified diff patches, I'll update it so it can apply cleanly to the most recent Platform source release, make any changes to it that might now be necessary, and send it to you, or if you put the Platform source on GitHub as was mentioned elsewhere, I'll make a pull request for it.
Of course, if you're mentioning it on the forums I'd guess you've probably already done some more work on it since 2.0PR4.2, but if you're interested in seeing my patch let me know and I'll get something to you (or use GitHub, I'll see it).
And the troubleshooting tools sound nice.
Sorry to hear about your PC troubles, if by any chance, you think we (members of the community) might be able to help you troubleshoot, just ask.
~3D1T0R
What sort of UI did you use? Did you use the GUI that was already included?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
It's been a while since I made a PA.Laz build, but here's a screenshot of one of my 2.0PR4.2 Builds: http://s15.postimg.org/s7i5hba3v/Custom_Colours_2_0_PR4_2.png
The colour sliders update the Options window's preview as they are changed, the Apply button hides unless you've edited the text in the box, and I was having difficulty with Unicode support at the time so Apps with Unicode AppInfo.ini's had errors instead of names.
I was actually looking at it again, and thinking that it might look better to put the sliders directly in the Options window under the preview, but I don't yet know how well that would work.
~3D1T0R
Yeah, that's my custom color form that I'd included at the time in the code but hadn't set live in the Options window.
The reason I didn't complete it is that I wanted to incorporate the color mixer better.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Do you want it? I'll take a crack at putting the sliders under the preview if you'd like.
Also I had added Custom Theme support (for one theme, …\Data\Theme\PATheme.ini) [back] in, but I think you wanted to do something more complete than that at some point, what is your plan on how that should work?
~3D1T0R
Mine was already working, I just disabled it.
We're not doing custom themes yet. Not until we finalize the look and feel. Once we add it, it's gonna be a mess to support it forever and designers/users will complain to no end if a future enhancement messes up a given theme (see Winamp, Firefox, etc, etc, etc), so I'm in no hurry to add it.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I think the platform needs a unique "PortableApps.com" design and shouldn't be modified by users.
I thought custom theme means that you can use your own images as a skin and not customize everything on the platform.
Why add custom themes if it's a huge pain in the a** to support?
We're going to implement both. But we can't even finish simple theming until we set the size of the platform and the layout in stone. We still may ditch the space indicator and move Search to the bottom (more likely now that Windows 10 moves it back down to the bottom), increase the size of the app list to 25 and increase the size of the form as well but just for the modern style theme, add another button to the right side for Sync to be able to sync files between PA.c installs, etc.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I did alter the Custom Colours form slightly (functionality I guess), and I only meant 'simple themes', as have been supported in some previous releases (I don't see Advanced Themes to be all that important and they'll be difficult to implement & maintain).
Specifically I was wondering if you'll move the currently applied Custom Theme into Data\Theme, and keep the inactive ones elsewhere (where?) or if you'll keep them all compartmentalised in one central place (e.g. Data\Themes\[ThemeName]), and also if you were going to have them appear in the list along side the built-in themes, or if you wanted to have only "Custom" appear there and add a separate 'Custom Theme Options' dialog which would appear when choosing Custom and list only the Custom Themes you've added (and options such as add and remove).
~3D1T0R
There is currently zero custom theming implemented in the plaform. Just because Data\Theme kind of worked at one point doesn't mean anything in terms of supported stuff going forward.
Custom colors will be independent of custom theming. They apply to all themes.
Theming will be implemented as 'simple' themes (images, etc) and, possibly later, fully custom themes (altered layouts).
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I understand that custom themes are not supported in current releases, and while it may not have been supported, and may not be the implementation that you use going forward, Data\Theme was fully working as far as I (and others in the community) expected it too (simple themes) for a single Custom Theme in some of the Beta/Pre-Release versions. Some things were changed in later versions which to some degree broke that functionality, but Data\Theme still 'kind of works', and Custom Colours also 'kind of works', so "There is currently zero custom theming implemented in the plaform." doesn't seem to be entirely correct. (There may be no support for it, but a partial implementation is still available and sort of usable in v12.0.5)
I understand that Custom Colours and Custom Themes are entirely different features; I was only mentioning them both because they happen to be features that I was interested in, and worked on when I was planning to submit some patches for the Platform.
'Fully Custom Themes' sound awesome too, but are obviously going to be a much larger hassle to implement, test and maintain than 'Simple Themes', and I personally would be happy to work on improving the current state of the 'Simple Themes' implementation, but I would like to know what you expect of such an implementation so I'm not simply wasting time and effort.
I'd like to help with the development of the PA.c Platform, but I either need you to tell me what you want, or I need to be able to use a system like GitHub where I can submit a Pull Request and you can easily see it, test it, review it, comment on it, and (if you're happy with it) merge it into the main repository. I may not have Delphi, but I have made several successful runs at getting the Platform to build under Lazarus, and while some specific issues appeared and some couldn't (at the time) be fixed or worked around in Lazarus builds, a Delphi build with my changes should have worked.
Please let me know how you'd like to move forward with this, or if you'd like me just to keep on waiting for the source control improvement that I've been hoping for for … quite a while.
~3D1T0R