I thought there was going to be a new beta every week or two.
Its been 3 weeks since the last one.
Will categories be in beta 6,I'm getting fed up of waiting.
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Welcome to PortableApps. As you know this site as well as the programs hosted by the site are all done on a volunteer basis. As a sometimes re-packager myself I understand your frustration at what would be ideally timely updates and schedules. In the real world though life does happen. Take a look around the forum I am sure that you will find answers to your questions herein. In the mean time enjoy what you have and be thankful none of us have4 to pay for t5his GREAT piece of software.
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
For two reasons,
One, the code for categories was done, what, three years ago? You can get categories now if you get the 1.5.2 version of the Platform and patch it with the R34 mod.
Two, beta 6 *was* promised on the 20th of July... but that was before beta 5 got pushed back... *and* beta 6 isn't supposed to have categories, that's 2.0 final, last I heard.
Categories would be in the official build if the official build used a free, open platform rather than one that is outdated that you can either pirate or shell out a few hundred C-notes for. I personally don't need them, but there are other menus that offer the feature. The PortableApps.com Platform is probably the most feature-bare portable app launcher you can get: it's made to be user-friendly, not geek-friendly. Asuite, Pstart, geek.menu (which is a fork of the PortableApps.com Platform), look 'em up. You can even have multiple launchers on your device.
Whenever a release date is announced, you need to apply the correction factor.
Multiply the date by the square root of negative one.
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
I'd love to follow your lead and lay down some constructive criticism of the PAM but I don't have the heart right now. I know the developers here work hard and they do it for the love of it, so it's hard to say a bad word against them (not that you are Nathan, I know that).
I'll weigh in with one simple comment off the back of what Nathan said, "The PortableApps.com Platform is probably the most feature-bare portable app launcher you can get" which is why I choose to use something else instead that provides me with the features I'm looking for, today.
In the PAM's defense it is starting to receive the attention it deserves (from developers and users alike) so hopefully perhaps it can begin to compete with some of the other applications out there. The app updater is definitely a huge boon.
my corner I go.....I just get offended when demands are made if you don't like it don't use it. If it is free don't complain I guess that is my final word....meanwhile if anyone is looking for me I shall be sitting in corner hiding in shadows
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
I think Nathan was just trying to show there are two sides to every (mostly) floppy disk. We needn't bring out the PA riot police just yet.
As for the corner... is that the naughty corner? You seem to be there an awful lot.
Nope As I used to say in the online trivia games it is the "I don't know {fill in blank as this is a G rated forum} corner. I may have over reacted if so I am sorry. Guess I am a bad apple all the time?
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
Yes, I've just become... something of a realist as it relates to the PortableApps.com Platform. It is still my menu of choice. It's fairly basic on the surface, but my needs are few. On my home computer, where I have enough apps to necessitate categories, I don't even use the Platform (menu). At all. I do have a shortcut to it, but I mainly use that to get to the Updater. The only reason I keep the Platform (menu) around at all on that drive is that it is an external (externally powered) hard drive, and if I were to take it somewhere (e.g. on vacation) the menu would be helpful. I would prefer categories, but the Favorites feature would suffice in that limited situation.
Actually, with regards to categories, I couldn't care less, for my own personal use, if they were never implemented. However, what John said about 2.0 final having favorites, some kind of most-recently-used list, and categories as well... I think the former two will be more useful to me. I know he feels the category implementation in the R34 mod was flawed, and I disagree with that (for what people want, it actually works great), but I am more excited about what 2.0 will offer, for my uses.
I also realize the PortableApps.com ecosystem is based around free software that people are not being paid to write, and appreciate that developers here are under no obligation to produce any results. However, self-imposed deadlines are always the worst, and when they're posted on the site, it's easy to assume that they're concrete.
And vf2nsr, don't be afraid to speak up. You're right, but frustration is necessarily inevitable when such a cool site promises to do something epic and then... doesn't. And complaints are also inevitable. It's only human, and I don't begrudge the general public that.
First off, I know it's frustrating when you're expecting something and are excited about it and it's not there when you want it to be. We (I, mostly) had a habit of scheduling a date and then missing it. So, with the Beta 5 release, we removed schedules and switched to "every week or two". That's an indefinite estimate and a target I'm shooting for. But that doesn't mean that if 14 days go by and you haven't seen a new version, that it's not coming or the sky is falling. It just means that there is additional work to be done before the beta is ready for release.
Second, the reason for the delay in Beta 6 is the complexity of some of the bugs we found with the Beta 5 release. Specifically, we have to go back and do updates to many of the existing application installers to get them to play properly with the updater once PA.c Installer 2.0.3 is done (which it should be tonight) and fixes the bugs in the live installers which affects them in use with the updater with software firewalls and proxies. This isn't a matter of just a quick patch to the updater or platform, but to many of our already-released apps that will need to be repackaged. And it needs to be done to stop the issue with online installer apps being 'updated' and winding up broken and unusable because the additional bits couldn't be downloaded.
Third, one of the more-advanced modes of the updater involves updates to several of our other apps, but we had to delay those for the new PA.c Installer as well due to the live installer bug. We actually may be moving the advanced updater modes to Beta 7 in order to avoid additional delays to Beta 6.
As for PAM MOD, it is not a patch for PAM, it's a fork based on the now-outdated 1.1 series of the platform. As it is based on such an outdated branch, it doesn't support PA.c Format and new apps with the PA.c Launcher won't show up properly in it. The categories implementation in PAM MOD was quite flawed and had known bugs. Plus, it didn't support localizations and was entirely manual, which is great for more geeks but not exactly friendly to average users. That's why we're working hard on categories and implementing them well.
And as for the technology behind the PA.c Platform, it's based on Delphi 2010, a fully Unicode-enabled Visual Pascal rapid application development environment. It's quite the opposite of outdated. The older versions were based on Delphi 2006, which is no longer used. While some other menus may have specific features the platform lacks (categories for example), they lack integrated backup/restore, an updater and some of the other features that will drop in 2.0. Some of them even require you to manually find and add all your own apps. And they're all based on outdated versions of Delphi (with the exception of PStart). So, while they have some geek-friendly features that we are just now introducing, they're hardly user-friendly.
We know there are a lot of folks that *really* want specific features (categories, file associations, etc) and they're all landing in 2.0. They'll be landing when they're ready in the upcoming betas. But as these are betas, part of the process is finding and fixing bugs in each release. And, as any developer knows, you can't necessarily predict what will be found once it's out in the world being used by lots of people. So, fear not, categories (and file associations and automated app shutdowns and portable fonts and more) are all coming. Just please have a little patience. It will be rewarded.
For now, I'm back to working out the remaining bugs in PA.c Installer 2.0.3 and fixing the remaining bugs in Platform Beta 5.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I hope y'all realize my post was purely a jest.
I have noticed the large amount of feedback that you've gotten on beta 5, and I figured that fixing those bugs would be a job. I haven't posted the ones I found because so many people beat me to it!
Yes, we love betas, because it gives us a chance to help you out, since we can't do any of the coding for you. So if you need to adjust the goals for betas 6 and 7, it's cool, just lay it on us when you are ready so we can help some more!
Groove on!
I made this half-pony, half-monkey monster to please you.
Thanks for the update John.
Thanks for clearing some of that up.
For example Delphi 2010, I had no idea, last I heard y'all were using 2006. At least an aspiring Platform developer can justify such an expensive purchase (unless it's gotten cheaper?) by it being current. Apologies for saying it was outdated, that was based on the information I had.
But user-friendly is just a nice way of saying simple. And geek-friendly usually means complex, a lot of options for example. An advanced product can be simple (VLC's options are a great example) of course but generally people who want the most advanced features don't care how user-friendly it is. See also, Linux, and the command-line. So if somebody really wants all those advanced features, abandoning ease of use might not be such a bad trade-off. Meanwhile the Platform (menu) is still the best for "everybody".