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can some one teach me to make my own Portable Platform

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slyneutron
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can some one teach me to make my own Portable Platform

i didnt know were to post it so i posted this in general but can you teach me to make my own portable platform launcher like the one here but with my own idea and being able to post it on my blog without any copyright from this website or any other site please.

NathanJ79
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Lot of work

It's a lot of work to start from scratch. Being as the PortableApps.com menu is open source, you can use it as a basis for your own menu. Pretty sure you have to give credit, but you can call it something else. geek.menu is one menu that is based on the PortableApps.com Platform. Perfectly legal. Others have as well.

If you want to call it your own and credit nobody, however, I'm pretty sure you must start from scratch. And that requires more help, depending on your level of expertise, than can typically be provided in a forum. To start, you need to find a programming language which can compile portable software. Some require dependencies; Visual Basic is famous for this. Don't touch anything with .NET in the name. Java should also be avoided, though it's recently begun being portablized. The PortableApps.com menu was written in Delphi, I believe. Then you need to learn the language - take a class at your local community college if they offer it, or teach yourself using resources online. C may be the most widely used language, as C++, Java, JavaScript, and many others derive from it. UnrealScript, which powers games from Unreal Tournament (1999) to Gears of War 2 (2009), is also based on C.

Long story short, writing a program that is good and used and loved by many is not something you can just do overnight.

slyneutron
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Thank you

I always liked the idea of having my own but the editing idea sounds good. Im not smart or good enough... yet to learn any languages im still trying to just learn python at the moment so thank you.

NathanJ79
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Editing is a good way

Editing is a good way to learn. I wanted a higher ammo capacity in a game I play, Deus Ex, but I never thought I could actually do it. Then I learned about a mod called Shifter, and read up on how its author opened the game's data files using the freely-available SDK. I followed instructions online, cracked open his mod (which I really liked) and made the necessary changes. Some were easier than others, but those I wanted, I worked at and eventually was able to make my own fork of his mod. And with his permission (the license was unclear) I published it. Later I got permission from another modder to use his code and integrated some of his features into mine. And I know nothing about programming, but I learned a bit. And that was UnrealScript, which is based on C, I believe. It's fairly easy to read and understand.

So what I would do is get a program which can compare text files (I believe WinMerge, offered here, does), and then get the source code for the PortableApps.com platform and the source code for one of the forks and see what was changed to accomplish what. Copy and paste accordingly, compile it, and test it on a few computers (XP, Vista, Win7, maybe even Win2k and Win98). I'm not sure how much you have to change for it to be legit, but I believe if you give credit it's all good...? Click on that OSI image they have on all the app pages, there's a lot of helpful information at that site. Open source sounds restrictive, ironically, and it kind of is, but I think it's more than fair for developers and great for the end user.

qwertymodo
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Just a note on your comment

Just a note on your comment on open source sounding restrictive, because I originally felt that way too. It isn't that it's restrictive, the reason you have to jump through those extra hoops is so that other people have the same freedom you do. I mean, if you had an open source program, but the author just "never got around to the extra work" of making the source easily available, then if you wanted to edit that program in the way you are talking about, you either outright couldn't do it or it would be a pain to even get started. As you work, you just have to realize that other people may use your stuff, and just think how you are coming in to this having almost no idea what you're really doing, wouldn't it be so much harder if the author didn't put the source in the right folders for it to compile right or some stupid thing like that? How would you know what was wrong? Not meaning to make a speech out of this, mostly just saying that hey, if someone else is letting you build off of their work and it was well enough put together that you were able to figure it out without pulling out your hair or giving up, well, just give back by trying to make things that way for someone else coming along later. Smile

Quamquam omniam nescio, nec nihil scio.

NathanJ79
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I agree

And I agree with that, maybe "restrictive" isn't exactly the right word. It's just that it's a bit more complicated than it perhaps should be, though these complications ensure that the original authors' work is credited and that the next developer can pick up where you left off.

jamcomm
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Nonsense!

Be definition, open source isn't restrictive!!!!!!!!!!

That's the wrong point of it - it doesn't restrict you - it gives you greater freedom

For restrictive licences - go talk to microsoft...

jamcomm
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Visual BASIC

There's nothing wrong with visual basic - any dependncies you can just include as they're part of the redistributable.

jamcomm
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"Lot of work"?! ROTFL!

"Lot of work"?!!?! No chance!!! If you can write software, it's pretty trivial; it's just a menu which can run programs which are selected by the user. A schoolkid could write it for you if you paid him a few bucks...

However. Producing one which has the momemtum that portableapps.com now has may be more tricky!

OTOH, the public is fickle - if you produced one which was better than portableapps.com (more applications, looked "nicer"), people would switch to it. That's just the reality of free software.

Good luck though...

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