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Portable App Development

Discuss portable app development and modification of existing apps.

Could use some help

Submitted by iTechNewsDaily on April 5, 2012 - 7:06pm

Ok, so I was planning on developing my own PortableApp. I read up on all the instructions but I'm still having a little trouble understanding it all. If I were to take a regular program, were would what parts of the program go? I understand how the PA format works for making the app, Its just that I'm confused.

Could someone just help me out understand the basics of making a portableapp?

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PA shortcut creator (for any file format and folders)

Submitted by javadKh on April 3, 2012 - 8:54pm

Hi everyone,

I am a new member, and have recently found PortableApps.com. Firstly thanks to developers.
I have developed a small app to automatically create PA shortcuts. I thought it might be useful for someone else as well.

I have applications that I don't want to place under the "portableapps" folder. Also I want to have shortcuts to some of my folders and files that are not ".exe' files (e.g. jar files). So I developed a small app using AutoHotKey. It is very simple to use:
1. Run the exe file

how to understand registry in PAL?

Submitted by joshatt on April 2, 2012 - 8:01pm

Hi,
Newbie question:
for example:
[RegistryKeys]
test1=HKCU\Software\AppName

the [RegistryKeys] function of PAL, in my understanding, is like:
when portable software starts, double-click "test1.reg" to import to registry and backup what's originally there,
and when portable software quits, delete what's imported, then restore the backup.

If I understand right, why specific location "HKCU\Software\AppName" is needed? There could be hundreds of lines and dozens of locations in "test1.reg", not just one location.

[Solved] PA Launcher environmental variables

vf2nsr's picture
Submitted by vf2nsr on April 2, 2012 - 12:41pm

I am working in SyncDocs and have most of it worked out, my questions is that I know (from reading) that NSIS supports $Desktop as a known environmental variable I do not see this listed in the PA Launcher manual. Is it a hidden feature or does it recognize Desktop or do I need custom code?

Basically I need to on launch of program move a shortcut from the Data folder to the desktop then back again on program close. The Desktop feature of NSIS seems the one to use but it just does not seem to want to work.

[Closed] NSIS help: get screen size/screen refresh rate, add to parameters

Bennieboj's picture
Submitted by Bennieboj on April 2, 2012 - 10:41am

Hi everybody,

I'd like to give 3 parameters to a exe: screen height, screen width and screen refresh rate (Hertz).
E.g.: -params 1280,1024,60.
I don't think there is a portableapps variable for it, so I searched for a NSIS solution.
For screen height and width I found this: http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Get_User%27s_screen_resolution .
But I couldn't find anything usefull for the screen refresh rate.

Anyway, I'd like to give the first two a go, I'll hardcode the framerate for a while.
Can somebody help me to add these to the CommandLineArguments value in launcher.ini?

Registry key handling

Submitted by Gremlin on March 28, 2012 - 7:37am

Hi,

I have a question regarding registry key handling. When I want to write registry keys I formerly had put the initial values in a .reg file and had only handled the keys with variable file path values via the launcher.ini. Later I noticed that some portable apps handle every registry key in the .ini file without initially having a .reg file (which gets created after the fist run).

An example with an external .reg file:

portable.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Intel\Indeo\5.0\Decoder]
"Scalability Levels"=dword:00000000

[Fixed]Halo Combat Evolved crashes with PAL

Bennieboj's picture
Submitted by Bennieboj on March 27, 2012 - 5:25am

Hi everyone,

I want to make Halo Combat Evolved (not Custom Edition) Portable.
There already is a launcher out there but since it's written in autoit3 and it doesn't backup the registry and such I wanted to do better. The only problem is that Halo doesn't like it when a process is attached to it, then it throws an exception, gathers data and closes/crashes.
This wasn't the case with the already existing launcher, I don't know why.

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