Is it possible to list shortcuts (.lnk files) rather than executables (.exe files) in the PAM? Or is there support for this in some variation (such as the "PAM MOD") ?
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Go read the post at the top (or near the top) of the PortableApps.com Menu Forum.
Is it possible to list shortcuts (.lnk files) rather than executables (.exe files) in the PAM?No because shortcuts use relative paths and that might change as you switch PCs.
Don't know about the second one though.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
How can relative paths change when you switch PCs?
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Thanks. I should read through my stuff more carefully before I hit the button!
OK - another try:
relative paths don't change as you switch between PCs.
But absolute paths do. And because shortcuts use absolute paths...
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
And because shortcuts use absolute paths...
If they do, they do, but if they don't, they don't.
They contain both absolute and relative paths. If the absolute one is invalid, they use the relative one. So change the absolute to something that's always invalid like aa:\ and it will use only the relative one.
"Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." Asimov
In my testing, making a shortcut with an absolute path and relying on Windows to try making it relative works sometimes, but it's not consistent, and it's slow.
Do we need a way for non-geeks to make exe shortcuts that use relative paths?
MC
Using NSIS, that is. If anyone wants one, I can whip up a few in a matter of minutes.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
You're a non-geek?
MC
I was just proposing a solution.
"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook
for those of you who don't know, Prism is a prototype extension to Fx. It allows you to split a web-app from Fx. Of course, when you do this, it creates a shortcut that accesses the web-app. I want to use these apps on my portable zip drive, but shortcuts don't work with PAM. Is there a fix?
No, and there probably never will be.
Shortcuts use absolute paths, which means that they have the explicit drive letter encoded within them. Since USB drive change letters as they move, this breaks the shortcuts.
The only 'fix' would be to quite literally recreate the shortcuts from scratch each time you plugged the drive in, and for the vast majority of cases, there are much simpler ways to get the same result.
What you would need to do is to create an app that could read all the settings out of a shortcut, and then create a new one with the same name and all of its settings based on the old ones. I know of an app that does the create, but I've not seen anything that can read a .lnk file and parse out its contents.
If you had such an app, that could update drive letters in shortcuts, that would be the first step towards menu inclusion.
Oops... I think I may have just answered the wrong question. Rereading your post, I'd guess that they're acutally url files, not shortcuts (they look pretty much the same, but they're quite different, and handled completely differently by the OS). I very much doubt that there'll be support for them in the menu any time soon, but it's possible, I guess.
to use any shortcuts via contextmenu "send to" and via taskbar quicklauncher http://www.noir3d.com/portableSuite/
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"May The Schwartz be with You!" Yogurt the Yoda
Imagine entering the relative path to something in a text file and changing the extension to something like 'paf.shc' and having it recognized by the menu...
That would be sweet.
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Geek.Menu already supports adding your own 'shortcuts', and I think some of the other menu mods do, too.