Since there´s no Tips & Tricks forum, I assume the better place to post may be here.
I´ve seen a lot of people asking how to create shortcuts with relative paths in windows, some say it´s just no supported etc etc At the end of the day there are several ways, like creating a windows shortcut files (.ink) or using a bat file wich can be converted to an exe with an icon file. Anyway non of both are ideal / have several disadvantages, so I´m going to share a method that works great for me and hopefully it may be useful for you as well.
- First we will need an Application called Portabilizer
You can get it from here http://www.mystercrowley.com/portabilizer.php - Now install it
- As you can see from this screenshot,
http://www.mystercrowley.com/img/screenshots/portabilizer.png
It´s a pretty straightforward app. OK, so we should now fill in the fields and here are some important details. After giving the name you want be sure to set a relative path in the launch target field i.e if your App exe is in E:\PortableApps\App.exe you may get something like \PortableApps\App.exe.
What about if you want your shortuct to have a specific paramter, well then add the parameter in the "parameters" field but add an space before it, otherwise it may not work.
For the last select the icon (it must be in .ico format) and the output folder. Note that the shortuct will only work if it´s being run from the same drive you have your App.exe - Click in Start and you just did it! ^^ You have a nice exe shortcut with a custom icon and relative path
Note: You may notice that the newly created shortcuts have the name of the Portabilizer author on the organization field. Well in the unlikely case you may want to customize that as well, grab Resource Hacker Portable from here
http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/
Open the exe shortcut with it and go to the version info tab like in this picture
http://www.raymond.cc/images/hacking-windows-live-messenger.png (courtesy of Raymond.cc), make the changes you want, select compile script and you are set.
Cheers
Phil D.
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