Beta 4 of the 2.0 release of the PortableApps.com Platform has been posted!
Beta 3 is outdated!
WHAT'S NEW IN 2.0:
This release adds a number of features to the PortableApps.com Platform from 1.5 including:
- Theme Switching - Seven colors (Red, Bronze, Green, Blue, Violet, Black and Silver) are included with the PortableApps.com Platform along with the ability to load other themes in PATheme format (an example is included below).
- 120dpi Support / Missing Icons Fixed - The whole menu now properly supports 120dpi in Vista and Windows 7. There will be some visual artifacting (as with nearly all apps at 120dpi) but otherwise it all works as expected.
- Transparency - You can now set the transparency of the whole menu from 0% to 90% directly from the Options menu.
- Favorites - You can now move your most-used apps to the top of the menu (similar to Pin to Start Menu in Windows). You'll wind up scrolling a lot less.
- Better App Hiding - App hiding is now accomplished by right-clicking and then selecting Hide. The app is hidden instantly without the app list being reloaded as it is in 1.5.
- App Unhiding - You can unhide apps within the menu by right-clicking and selecting to Show Hidden Icons. Icons that are hidden are then show with a line through them. You can hide and unhide icons as you wish and then hide them again.
- Run / Run As Admin - Apps can be run or run as administrator from the right-click menu.
- App Load Progress Bar / Faster Menu Load - The menu will now load much faster and will then show a progress bar indicating how long it will take before it is done detecting all your apps.
- Uninstall Apps - You can now right-click on an app and select to uninstall it. It will remove the whole app directory after a confirmation/warning screen.
- Autorun Apps - You can now have apps automatically run when the menu loads. Just right-click on an app and select Automatically Start.
- Multimonitor Support - The menu's additional forms now properly appear on PCs with 2 or 4 displays
- Check Drive for Errors - Check your portable device for errors with just a click in the Options menu
- Improved Wine Support - The menu will now load a square theme on Wine and avoid the pink edges that appear. (A fix for the app icons loading without all colors is being worked on)
- Better Icon Refresh (and F5) - When refreshing the app icons, you'll get the same progress bar as when the icon first loads. You can refresh by selecting it from the Options popup menu, by right-clicking an icon in the app list and selecting Refresh or by just clicking F5.
- Hide Desktop Icons - The menu can hide the PC's desktop icons using a selection in the Options menu
- Visual Changes - The menu no longer uses bold fonts and has the start of font switching which will let it use Tahoma on Windows XP and earlier and Segoe UI on Vista and later to better fit with the rest of the interface.
The following issues have been fixed in Beta 2:
Always On Top - The menu is set to be the topmost window which causes issues with the dialog windows, this will be fixed in Beta 2
3rd app button - The 3rd app listed in the list is positioned 1px too high, this will be fixed in Beta 2
App Install Refresh - After installing a new app, the app list is not sorted properly (favorites are in the wrong position). This will be fixed in Beta 2
Backup Icon Highlight - The backup button doesn't highlight to its hover state when you are directly over the backup icon. This will be fixed in Beta 2
4th App Icon - Beta 3 fixes a bug with the 4 item in the app list not working
The PortableApps.com Updater has been left off of Beta 3 (it's not quite complete), but will be in Beta 4 shortly!!
SCREENSHOTS OF PORTABLEAPPS.COM PLATFORM 2.0 BETA 2
Default Theme with Firefox and Thunderbird set as favorites
Menu With Right-Click App Popup Menu
The new Options menu
The new blue theme
DOWNLOAD PORTABLEAPPS.COM PLATFORM 2.0 BETA 3
Download PortableApps.com Platform 2.0 Beta 3 [1.5MB download / 2MB installed]
MD5: 33dee2a6fa94a4d9fc92970ab9198f44
You can also download the source for the platform, backup, restore and installer.
EXAMPLE CUSTOM THEME: WINDOWS 7
A sample theme in PortableApps.com Theme Format has been provided, you can preview the Windows 7 theme or Download the Windows 7 theme.
Beta 4 with the PortableApps.com Updater will be coming shortly.
Please download, test and post your feedback!
Thanks,
John
KNOWN ISSUES
Localizations - Some strings in the dialogs are not yet showing the proper translations.
Uninstallation Window Slow - For larger apps, the uninstallation window will appear to hang if you try to click on it repeatedly on Vista. It is still running and will still update to show the current directory being removed (unless you click on it and Vista stops allowing the window to update).