Is it that I haven't been paying attention? Or have I become hopelessly muddled in old age? I thought I recalled some, though not all, PortableApps were available in U3 packaging as well as in the usual form of things. I don't seem to find them, though. Puzzling? Are we Moving Beyond U3 (this would only be a mild disappointment; a case of concept being brill but implementation perhaps less that perfectly ready for prime time...)?
New: DesktopSnowOK (Jan 6, 2025), Platform 29.5.3 (Jun 27, 2024)
1,100+ portable packages, 1.1 billion downloads
No Ads Nov/Dec!, Please donate today
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
Firefox and thunderbird are avalible as U3.(the old ones though)
Go to software.u3.com
They don't get updated much though.
----
R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
I have noticed that the auto-update features in Firefox and Thunderbird seem to work properly with the PortableApps/U3 implementations; last time I looked they were up the current 1.5.x mark and working quite well.
[This is significant praise; my principal use for flash drives is to carry that, rather than my Portégé to offices and classes in the college where I teach, where the IT operation is not really all one could hope for -- and I >am
I adapted Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org for U3 as a contract job for U3 (aka they paid me to). They are not 100% open source packages as they contain some U3 closed source bits in them. (Which I'm not happy about... and which prevents me from hosting them on SourceForge or being able to release test versions.)
As for the future, things are still a bit up in the air. I'm trying to find a way to fund U3 development. It's tough because most U3 users will only get their apps from U3's site and never come here (for example... notice that there's no link from the FF for U3 page to here for support, donations, etc)... unless they have a problem. Without coming here, they don't look at/click on the ads on this site or make donations to help support it. Not to mention the fact that the regular portable apps are more popular (about 10-20x more downloads) and they work on U3 drives, non-U3 drives, iPods, etc. Add that all up, and there's less incentive to do things on the U3 side of things. But, that's kinda the way a closed-source, commercial platform works.
So, the challenge is to find a way to work within that commercial platform and make these apps available to users that choose to go the U3 route... but without impeding the primary goal... which is to allow everyone to use these apps on any device (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, network share, local install, CD, etc) on any computer (Windows 95 through Vista and Wine so far, more to come) without needing to spend any money. I'm working on a few things along these lines including having paid ads within the "Other U3 Apps" dropdown in FF for U3... possibly making paid (but cheap) utilities like backup for U3 while the non-U3 side remains free... and a couple more things along those lines.
At the moment, I'm pushing towards the 1.0 release of the Portable Apps Suite, which features an integrated launch menu and backup utility along with all the apps already included. After the 1.0 release, I'm going to be putting a bit more energy into solidifying the U3 side of things and see what makes sense both for U3 users and for this site's future (and mine). I'm even debating creating a connector to allow the full Portable Apps Suite launch menu to be launched from within U3 (even on startup). Not an ideal solution (having 2 menus), but it would make it easier for U3 users to be able to use things on the non-U3 side.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!