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What Portable Apps Could Be.

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June 29, 2014 - 5:29pm
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extio
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What Portable Apps Could Be.

For a number of years i used a program called Pstart. some of you may have used this program, before the portable launcher was developed. it allowed you to do some incredibly useful things.

when it was launched, you could set each program in the menu to launch also, if you desired, but also, one could launch programs when exiting the program.

when i exited the menu, i would launch a batch script that would check and make sure each and everyone of my apps were unloaded from memory, or it would alert me that they were not, and attempt to kill the programs.

if the developer of the portable apps program could just TRY USING these advanced features by getting an old copy of pstart, that person could see some really beneficial changes that should be made to the portable apps launcher.

it would be important to hide these features under "advanced settings" to not confuse the average user, but to us portable enthusiasts, being so for years, it would double the power of the app.

doesn't everyone agree with this?

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June 29, 2014 - 5:42pm
John T. Haller
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Already Start, Shutdown Soon

You can already auto-start any app with the PA.c Platform just by right-clicking it and checking off Start Automatically.

In an upcoming release, all apps will be automatically closed on exit by default (intelligently closing the apps themselves and then letting their portable launchers shut down on their own to ensure no data is lost). If any won't close (example: LibreOffice with unsaved changes), the platform will alert you and let you know and pause shutdown, letting you close them yourself. There are currently no 3rd party utilities with these abilities.

Advanced users will also be able to do scripting on platform start and exit using standard Windows command line with special environment variables made available to them to aid the scripting.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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June 29, 2014 - 6:44pm
(Reply to #2)
extio
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i didnt know that you could

i didnt know that you could do that through right click, but i think that rather than just have a check mark on a menu, people should be able to click a "app properties" button. this would allow you to change the icon, set it to launch on startup, set it to launch on exit, change how its run usually, and even run a command when the icon is clicked instead of an actual app. manually adding an icon that links to a folder would be nice also.

all this should be done in a mini- properties window, or the app menu should change to be this until you pick save, then it switches back to the app menu.

sorry that i couldnt find the feature request but i guess i have started the thread now...

just my opinions.

Because, One Truth Prevails! (as does One Love). Pronounced X-T-O. Not an ex-uncle.

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June 29, 2014 - 6:47pm
(Reply to #3)
John T. Haller
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Already Planned

All of those features are already planned for a future release: https://portableapps.com/node/28593

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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June 29, 2014 - 10:33pm
(Reply to #4)
extio
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implemenation

The way i would program it is i would save a configuration file in the portable app resource directory, and when i opened the config file i would go through the list of apps, if the app at hand doesnt have a section, add one which stores name="firefox", relative_path="/apps/firefox" or whatever the relative path is, icon="apps/firefox/icon", and so on.

autostart="true";
exitlaunch="true";
confirmclosed="true";
etc

when the menu displays it would use the config file to build the display, and editing the properties window would just change the config file.

that would mean a person could just edit the config file until the "app properties" display is built.

Because, One Truth Prevails! (as does One Love). Pronounced X-T-O. Not an ex-uncle.

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June 29, 2014 - 11:31pm
(Reply to #5)
John T. Haller
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Config Files

Normal people don't edit config files. The less than 1% of users who like to tweak do (I fit that bill most of the time). So, it doesn't really make sense to invest a ton of time to make it fit that model.

The goal of PortableApps.com is to have everything just work without the need to tinker and tweak constantly, as folks used to back in the days of PStart... having to set environment variables, command parameters, and other bits just to make an app 'kind of, sort of' portable but still be unable to open recent files, etc. The PA.c Platform has hundreds of apps that all install, update, and work automatically, and that's its forte. Our goal is to get as much software as possible to be portable, installable, and auto-updateable out of the box in this fashion and available in our app store.

That said, part of the push in the upcoming set of updates is to continue to add new advanced tweaking features so that users can configure semi-portable apps that aren't in PA.c Format (configuring environment variables, command line parameters, changing the icon when the app has multiple EXEs without a proper one, etc). This will be handled via the platform UI with a simple Properties window for both auto-detected apps and manually added ones.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

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July 9, 2014 - 11:12pm
(Reply to #6)
extio
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ok

if its not already in a text stored setup, then yes, adding the config thing is silly. i just meant... if it was easy... but yeah not if it would be going out of the way.

sounds good, i would put in the app properties window the ability to make an app close with the closing of the launcher, but ive been thinking, it should maybe only unload everything when the eject button is pushed. and if the eject button is pushed and its not on a usb, but on the system hard drive, then it should unload everything and close, but not unmount the drive obviously... just some additional thoughts. maybe too difficult to implement.

edit - or more specifically an exclude switch on the app properties window, just for apps you dont want to autoclose with the apps automatically unloading from memory.

Because, One Truth Prevails! (as does One Love). Pronounced X-T-O. Not an ex-uncle.

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June 29, 2014 - 5:53pm
3D1T0R
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JTH beat me (I swear that post wasn't there when I hit reply!)

Check out the PortableApps.com Platform Bug Report and Feature Tracker.
(there was more here but JTH covered it all, so I removed my version)

~3D1T0R

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