Launchers.
I'm new. Where can I find them? People say, "look at the launchers for similar programs to see what needs to be done." If they are already part of the portable program, how can I view the scripts used in the launchers?
BTW. I'm looking to start with making safari portable. I need a launcher I have gathered from my research. I tried searching for firefox and opera launchers as those seem like similar programs. I couldn't find info on how to locate, much less adapt those launchers. I've done my regshot. I've got all of the registry info. The portable apps template looks to have more information than I'm interested in. If I could look at a similar launcher I could adapt my launcher to fit my program I gather.
This is fun, the whole learning to make an application portable thing, but I would like some help.
Much Love,
Christopher Hiles
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has the sourcecode of the Launcher included.
It is in the AppnamePortable/Other/Source folder and its called AppnamePortable.nsi.
You can open the nsi files with Notepad++.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
I've created a guide of sorts to help you with making a launcher.
I called it How to Create A Portable App: The Guerrilla Field Guide
You will be most interested in the part where it lists what launchers to reference for a certain situation.
If you need more help, you're welcome to make a separate post in the PortableApp Developement forums.
And, altough you've been here for a week, Welcome To PortableApps.com
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
Thanks for the help. That is what I was looking for. Man this firefox launcher has a lot of code. For a beginner like me anyways. Oh well. It is probably really simple once I get to substituting Safari for Firefox in the code. Thanks again guys. You have been helpful! I'm glad to know that there are people on this forum willing to help.
use Firefox as astarting point or an example.
It is the most advancerd PortableApps.com-Launcher on the planet and has a lot of bits and pieces no other launcher needs.
The first step is to find out what the launcher has to do (backup registry, redirect settings to App folder or deal with copying stuff to the local drive), then pick the launcher which is closest to your needs and start off this one.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
First of all, It really is not that simple, you can't just substitute safari when it says Firefox in the code, there's a lot more to it. If you want to develop portable apps, I wouldn't recommend starting off with a web browser as your first one, then build up to more complicated projects. Start with something simple and basic - Sumatra PDF or 7-zip Portable for example. A standalone exe is the easiest to do. Look around Sourceforge.net or the Request Apps forum for an app that hasn't been made portable yet, and have a go at it. That's how I started.
Hi everyone,
I am new to this whole portable apps thing as well, just as chiles I'd love to learn more about how to create portable apps but to be honest even with the Guerilla Field Guide I'am not quite sure where to begin.
Till now I made apps portable just by downloading them, installing them, copying the app folder to my external drive, uninstalling them from my system, then do format c: and see if they work, most of them did, but I am not sure if this is the right way and of course I did'nt know what to do with the ones that didn't work.
Most of the apps that I use have been made portable by this community already, the problem I have with the downloads of them is quite simple, I don't like my apps to be filled with ads and *.txt which I won't read anyways, so I'd like to be able to create my own portable versions of this list of apps:
7-Zip
AntiVir (if possible?)
CCleaner / CrapCleaner
CDBurnerXP (might switch this one for something else though)
EAC / Exact Audio Copy (which has not been made portable by this community, which is very interesting!)
Filezilla
Firefox
foobar2k
Gamma Panel
GIMP
JKDefrag
Miranda IM
Mumble (has been request but doesn't seem to be worked on)
nLite
ObjectDock
OpenOffice
Skype
Steam
Truecrypt
VentriloMix
VLC
Zattoo (very nice app for people in europe, but also doesn't seem to be worked on)
Of course I'd share them if somebody would be interested in ad-free apps as well.
As you already said Firefox seems to be very difficult to start with, but what about Mumble, Zatto or EAC, I'd love to give something back to the community!
Thanks a lot for your help,
ERDi
Nobody willing to help me
?
Normally its a very rare thing that no one wants to help here
The Problem with me is that I have exams coming up so I cant do anything right now and I guess that other people don't have much time right now either. Or maybe they just haven't seen the post yet.
Remember, everyone here is doing this in his/her spare time. So if everyone is swamped with work/school/whatever, it will take a little longer till you get a response. I'd give it a little more time and not ask this type of question after only one day.
What exactly is it that makes you unhappy with the Apps already available here (7-Zip, Firefox, Filezilla, GIMP, JKDefrag, Miranda IM, OpenOffice and VLC)?
What do you mean by "ads and *.txt"?
These Apps are already made portable in probably the most professional way. You come here to ask someone to do the work again just because you are unhappy with the format? Its a little weird. If you want to save space and dont need the help.html, you can delete the whole /Other folder. That will save you a little. But the whole rest is needed for the Apps to run (except maybe the /App/DefaultData folder). So there is not much to get rid of anyway.
AntiVir, Skype and CDBurnerXP, ObjectDock, Gammapanel and Zattoo are closed source so the only thing you could get here is a launcher for it.
Truecrypt already has lots of posts in this Forum - use the search to find them.
I dunno about the rest.
Respectfully,
Simeon
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Hi Simeon,
thanks a lot for your reply and being respectful eventhough I was impatient.
What I don't like about the apps in the download section is:
a) the splash screen at the beginning, I would like them to start just the way they do without being portable
b) the new folder structure, take 7-Zip for example, what is "Data" and "Other" good for? What are the folders "AppInfo" and "DefaultData" in "App" good for?
c) also the readmes and help.txt/html's etc. do I need them or can I just delete them?
d) unluckily there do not exist portable versions of the most recent updates of apps like Firefox, Filezilla etc.
After cutting all the closed source apps, Mumble is one of the open source ones left, I'd really like to help the community out with working on it, but where to start from?
a) You can use the AppnamePortable.ini inside the /Other/Source folder to disable the splash. For that just copy it to the Applications main folder and change "DisableSplashScreen=false" to "DisableSplashScreen=true".
b) Data is the folder where all your user data is in. Thats for easy backup-ability. Other contains all the stuff that isn't Application- or Data-related. Its the pics for the help.html and the Source files.
Appinfo contains important files for the next version of the Platform/Menu (icon and description). DefaultData contains the default settings. They are copied to the Data-folder on first run.
c)If you don't need them, delete them.
d) Portabalising an Application takes time. Sometimes less, sometimes more. While Firefox is up to date, Filezilla isnt but will be soon.
Your best starting point is here. The best thing is: Find out what your App does, where it stores its settings, find an already portable App and modify the Launcher to meet the needs of you App and then its testing...testing...testing
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Hey Simeon,
Shame on me, you've already told me so many things I should have found out myself, but still there are questions who remain and which this guide can't tell me. Some are portableapps.com-specific, others about portable apps in general. Might I still ask them?
One of the issues in making an app portable is trade marks and copyright. (I happen to be a trade mark & copyright attorney btw.) Making a launcher for an app without modifying or copying anything from the app itself, if you can do it, shouldn't involve any legal issues. However, if you do need to copy or mod anything to portablise an app, permission may well be needed and, without that permission, using e.g. the same name or screen layout is quite like to constitute an infringement of the original rights.
Some people may say of course "Oh I did it and it wasn't a problem", but just because the original app creator hasn't objected yet doesn't necessarily make it legal - any more than walking across someone's lawn is legal just because they didn't sue you for trespass at the time. So that means that that wonderfully brilliantly useful portable version of Chrome you've just created can't simply be called "Chrome Portable" without running the risk of Google threatening all kinds of legal mayhem, and even using a diifernt name may still be a problem if you've copied the code without permission.
In practice, of course, what you do for your own private consumption or just to share with a few friends for non-commercial purposes is unlikely to get you into trouble - but it's a different matter if you post it here.
That's why, of course, this site is generally restricted to either open-source royalty-free material or programs where specific permission is given or launchers which don't mod or copy the original program - portableapps.com doesn't want to get sued either for publishing or promoting anything illegal.
I hope this is is some useful background - I appreciate some people may regard it as unhelpful to what they want to do, but the law is just the law I'm afraid.
post'em.
Even if I don't answer, there are enough people here willing to help you
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Thanks!
1) In the GIMPPortable.ini there is no Splashscreen entry, also I cannot add it to the existing file, how is it I can't get rid of the splashscreen with GIMP?
2) If you have an app installed you can choose to open *.7z, for example, in 7-Zip, unluckily with the portable app I cannot just choose the 7-Zip launcher to open up whenever I doubleclick a 7z, how can I fix this?
3) Can you try to explain to me what the difference between a portable app and an app which can be used even after format c:, having copied the appfolder to an external drive beforehands, is? Is it just that you can use portable apps without having any registryentries at all? Do apps like those mentioned early even write registryentries into the new system?
1) GIMP is special. Its splash screen isn't displayed by the Launcher like all the other programs do, but instead John modified the built in splash screen. So if you want to disable it, you have to find out how to disable GIMP's built in splash.
2)Yes that one of the downsides of Portable Apping. There are some portable file association programs in the forums. You'll find them searching for "file association". I haven't used any of them so I cant give you any tips.
3)I can try: Quite frankly, I haven't heard of them yet. But I guess its a windows set-up where the program's settings files are on a different drive and thus can be reused after a reinstall of Windows.
I doubt that the whole program resides on a separate partition and can be reused without a reinstall cause if I reinstall Windows, the Registry gets lost/deleted. And the registry is another important part for portable Apps.
All Apps from this page don't leave any personal settings behind. They might leave some traces in the registry but no personal data. Some write to the Registry but they check if the keys exist and back them up before applying the portable settings and restore the local keys after you closed the program.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Search for Cafe or eXpresso. Also, there's the PortableFileAssociator
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
Quote:
2) If you have an app installed you can choose to open *.7z, for example, in 7-Zip, unluckily with the portable app I cannot just choose the 7-Zip launcher to open up whenever I doubleclick a 7z, how can I fix this?
Without file associations, you have to work manually - like back in the dark ages before double-click worked magically.
If you start 7zFM.exe, you can use it to browse to the file you want to open.
Otherwise, you can start the target program (say an editor or whatever) and drop the file you want onto it (standard drag and drop).
Jim
neutron1132 (at) usa (dot) com