I am currently testing applications before transferring them to my flash drive. Even after the initial "install" load, Firefox Portable takes several minutes to load.
The test directory housing all the files I intend to transfer to my flash drive is on my Desktop. I am running Vista, with privileges. My installed version of FF loads lightning-fast, even with addons and history and such. I did all the performance improving tips listed on the FFP page, which sped it up from about 5 minutes to 2-3 minutes to load. Once FFP loads, it runs fine.
What am I missing?
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Mine runs as fine as the installed one when I am running it from a hard disk.
If you have Vista it cant be you PC being old or slow so I guess it has to be something else. As I said I cant reproduce it, lets see what others say.
Oh and welcom here to PortableApps.com!
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
Well, I _thought_ I had checked everything...
I use COMODO Internet Security on my laptop as primary security. I had turned it off a bit before I tested FFP, so I could see the most recent installer and answer a question for a friend. I tested FFP again, and X-Firefox, to see if it was a problem with the launcher- both were slow. Then I noticed CIS was off and turned it back on; both forms of portable FF start up nice and quick now.
I tried turning CIS back off, and both forms of FF start up about as fast as my installed version, whether it is on or off, now. Maybe CIS blocks something in Vista that was keeping the install from finishing properly? That's my best guess anyway.
Very strange. I never heard of a security program speeding up the computer before (barring actual infection, which multiple checks insist I don't have).
note, that on first starts, the firefox will try to connect to an external server and will attempt to download larger amount of data which belong to this antiphishing feature (could be more then 50mb). Therefore at beginning all might seem to be very slow, the data has to be stored to your stick, after all the data was received correctly, all will behave better.
So the magic is not in the comodo, but if you just leave ff online for some time and allow it to communicate, later it will work fine.
However, you can disable this feature, instruction found here:
https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#performance
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
I mentioned in the description- it continued to be slow _after_ the first run. And I disabled the anti-phishing feature immediately after it finally loaded, as recommended in the instructions for improving performance.
if the download is not complete on first attempt it will try to finish it simply on then next. If you disable it, ok it will not use it any more, but it comes with the feature enabled and it will try to complete the task first. It is simply always so, many people complain that it is slow, but later admit that it started be better. There were number of threads on that here before.
Just go and try again, clean install on clean stick, it will be slow, wait some time, leave it doing something and it will recover by itself.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Maybe. I left it alone for a good five minutes, but I suppose the fact that I was doing other things might have made the unnecessary download take that long. :-. I am glad I will be copying the complete set over to my drive, rather than having to wait for that on each stick.
Sorry to bother everyone, then; I just didn't find any information on non-first-run slowness in my search. I guess it had dropped out of search priority. So, now there's a thread for the next person to find!
when you copy the whole folder to the stick, don't be surprised when number of thing will not work, particularly many extensions. They will have to be reinstalled when all in final position.
Also there might be some issues with the download folder, this is stored in the ff and when it can not be found, then download might not work etc.
With portable apps, the only thing which may change in the path is the drive letter, no other parts of the path are allowed to change.
It is always better practice to install the apps directly to the stick instead of preparing them in advance on hard drive.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
i.e. if you want to test it out on your C:\ drive, make sure that you install to C:\PortableApps\ so that when you move it to your flash drive, only the letter changes.
So, PortableApps applications don't use relative paths, they just have drive letter as a variable? That is definitely good to know- thank you for the heads up!
some do use relative, but it's the add-ons and extensions that may or may not use relative.
We don't control the multiple varieties of the add-ons/extensions and their idiosyncracies.
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
Do most of the PortableApps use relative paths, or just the drive variable? Otto's comment makes it sound like many of the PA programs will break with my pre-install test method.
If Firefox extensions break when the container folder changes, that might be something to mention in discussions where people mention pulling it off the stick to run from the desktop. From the sound of it, that might not work depending on your extensions?
FFP does ask you for a download folder by default, so that's not an issue, thankfully. I hope most of my base-set extensions are willing to play nice with being moved... I was hoping to archive the whole installed pack with the settings I like for future installs, rather than having to do the whole thing over again.
Officially, nope, it isn't supported, don't change paths, things might get left behind, or fail to run, or mess up, or make your fridge ice up and your girlfriend leave you (wait, wrong email)...
Seriously though, the official line is that the specification for portable apps is that you can change the drive letter (only) and no other use case is supported.
UNofficially, I've got something like 100 apps on my flash drive, and virtually all of them work fine on a backup sync copy I have on my local disk in a different path. So, if you want to try them with a different path then go ahead, but you'll never know for sure which ones will break, possibly in weird subtle ways that you don't notice until you either need them, 300 miles from home, or you discover that one has dumped your plaintext password database onto an internet cafe c:\ drive
Basically, it might work, it might not, and it might be different each time you try it. If you hit problems, you are totally on your own, and people here won't be able to be much help, in general, since weird and unpredictable things can come into effect.
We don't just mention it, we usually scream it
Such as in this thread, where we say "Don't change the path, that's not what PortableApps do."
Seriously, the devs never suggest people do it. The use cases listed don't imply it can be done. Nothing anywhere says that these things are for anything other than use on a roaming flash drive. We also hasten to tell people not to change the paths whenever anyone discusses maybe doing it.
I must have caught threads that hadn't been officially commented on when I saw the "try it on your desktop" suggestions.
Thank you very much for clearing it up for me, both in "what's supported" and "what might work". I think I will keep poking at the ones on my desktop for the moment, and pay close attention to which apps I installed from other sites that specifically say they use relative paths, and which ones I got from here that only use a drive variable. The PA installers are so clean that I should be able to recreate my install pretty quickly on a new drive as long as certain key things use relative paths.
I already use Addon Collector, so I foresee a "portable install" collection in my future to speed up the making of new FFP installs. :-J