There are two things bugging me about the PortableApps launcher. The first one was when it stopped working from system folders, like ProgramFiles. I believe that should be an on/off feature, not an ultimatum. We portable software enthusiasts are power users, aren't we? But I kinda got used to it.
Another thing that keeps nagging me is that "xyz did not close properly last time" popup. It mostly happens the next portable app launch after I shutdown the PC without quitting the app.
https://imgur.com/qPQprSL
Is this popup really necessary? If it is, why does it require user input to click OK? What I'm supposed to confirm? Why not just relaunch the app on it's own? If it is SO important, attach an auto-close timer to this popup and relaunch the app.
It's really frustrating having to make 3 clicks instead of one to launch an app.
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Did not close properly last time, but who cares?
October 27, 2017 - 12:41pm
#1
Did not close properly last time, but who cares?
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Complete details on why you get that error and how it works are outlined in the support section: https://portableapps.com/support/portable_app#didnotcloseproperly
As for Program Files, multiple apps in our lineup will either run in local mode (storing everything in APPDATA/registry) if you stick them in Program Files or will fail to work entirely if run from there and not installed. Plus they won't work from there in any modern version of Windows at all unless you disable UAC (please don't, for security's sake). If you really want to do this and analyze the code of PAL and PAI, you will find something you can do on your personal PC to allow using it that way anyway. Note that this is completely unsupported. For the curious, completely unsupported means it will definitely break multiple apps in our app directory, could lose you your data, and no support questions/requests of any kind will be accepted from a user running things in this fashion.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Hmm, not sure I agree with the future planned direction of PortableApps not having you interact with that message unless it's 'togglable' to always wait for my response - it's saved my bacon a few times.
I read this and the linked page mostly out of curiosity to find out anything more about what happens when that message shows up but I do know that it stops me in my tracks and reminds me to hunt for any data I can rescue before I click 'OK.'
I have a cat who knows full well that laptops are 'made of warm' and she's managed to shut it down or kill programs on occasions when I've forgotten to protect the laptop before walking away and if it weren't for that message, I wouldn't have remembered to hunt out files with data and back them up before hitting OK. Although most apps I use do successfully retrieve data from things I've been working on, that's not always the case and there have been occasions where letting PortableApps do the clean-up before grabbing what I can would have resulted in lost work. (I love programs that let you do incremental saves and keeping them until you intentionally quit - she's also good at highlighting and overwriting huge chunks of my saved work and on at least one occasion managed to save the changes. Incremental saves can get that work back. Yes, I know one should back up and yes, I do, but when one has started something new and then takes a trip to the littlest room in the house and comes back or just goes to get oneself a drink of water...)
Also, at one stage, I was having a persistent problem with OpenOffice and that was the only way to retrieve my data because Restore (or whatever it's called) always failed. The files were there, they could be opened, but OpenOffice always lost them and wiped them out. The message would remind me to make backups before letting OpenOffice proceed with its normally unsuccessful attempt.
So if you do go that direction, this is at least one person who'd like to have the option to be able to stop it from continuing on before giving me chance to track down and back up recent data.
"Did not close properly last time, but who cares?" EXACTLY! So annoying.. every.. single.. time!
Now we know who cares though.. People who are incapable of setting a screensaver or logout after 30 sec if you have a cat (how hard is it?). It's people like this that make the world cumbersome for everyone else.
Seriously, is this even an issue? What programs would erase data on restart from a crash? Browsers and editors have doc recovery built in. Raise your hands if you have ever manually recovered data from a portable app before restart.. tweezeet, tweezeet.. No one! (okay, maybe two people). Good intentions, but not practical.
I use many, many portable apps to save time when working on-the-go, or reinstalling or migrating, mostly simple utilities, sometimes for browsers (but they're more of a pain to keep updated). I have never fished for a backup.
Great to see there's a goal of fixing this, but the solution seems overly-complicated: Why not just allow a user to set a preference to ignore a forced termination? Again, how hard is that?.. "ignore_hard_termination=1".. done, never have to switch back to the explorer, hunt to right-click the right file, hunt to click the right sub-menu 'open-with' hunt to click the app. (no, I don't use the PA launcher - it won't hide into my notifications tray). Think of the millions of unnecessary carpal tunnel surgeries you will save! ;)!
It's 2022, and this is still a thing??
When the app is set to autostart on startup, you can't expect the user to close off each and every single app before shutting down.
Especially when it's like a background app like instant messaging app.
Is it that difficult to simply code on startup to clean up and run it again, the user doesn't care what failed, especially when you restart the app, everything works as it should.
I've seen threads about this issue dating back 10 years ago, so dev probably just didn't want to fix this.
Perhaps portableapps isn't meant for some type of apps.
Please re-read this: https://portableapps.com/support/portable_app#didnotcloseproperly
If you'd like to work on the code for this yourself or pay a developer to, you're welcome to do so. But you don't get to make claims on other people's time without compensation.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
THIS answer
Your attitude and respond to this person is downright just conceited and arrogant
So basically what I get from this is that PortableApps are not interest in their userbase, and could case less about user concerns and issues.
I could care less if this "app" is free or not, there's a user base, it should be support with the user base requirements not a selfish road map
Because of this CRAP, I encourage others to rather find other solutions as there are plenty out in there in 2023, but I will no longer be support a J@CK@$$ like this anymore
The comment you're replying to is part of a thread that fully explains what needs fixing. As this project is open source, you are free to work on a solutions yourself for free. The source code is on github. If you're unable to do so, you could also hire a developer yourself to make the changes you'd like to see.
Maintaining this site along with the platform, launcher, installer, etc and the majority of app updates is mostly run by a single developer. That'd be me. I'm currently very busy with unfortunate life stuff outside of this project. I'm not sure if you intended it, but your comment seems to be stating that you are entitled to me working on what you want. That is not the case and not the way open source works.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
You just registered to contribute ... THAT? Don't expect much approval for that behaviour.
If you knew the userbase, you would possibly understand the problems better.
Good Morning, been using the program for a couple years and it is amazing.
I always close all my open apps, and the only time I get this issue is when I switch computers.
I use the same programs most of the time and all the ones I used on computer A at the office, when I go home and use Computer B at home, this is the time I get the msg when I know I closed all before I left.
It is not hard to fix and really no complaints, just curious, since this is a program that moves from computer to computer as a normal operation.
I am a pilot and use it every where so I don't have too worry what I forgot.
Thanks for a great work.
Are you using it from a cloud folder? If so, make sure you allow enough time for it to close and then your cloud provider to sync changes to the cloud. Otherwise, you're opening an instance from home that synced before it properly closed at work.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!