Portable Apps..?

[Alex Tweedly]

Chipp Walters wrote:

> I've been thinking a lot about this lately-- and I'm leaning on the 
> side of creating next versions of my apps as mostly portable from now 
> on. Portable apps have the distinguishing feature they are entirely 
> self-contained in a single folder and can even be stored on USB drives 
> if the user wishes. They are easy to install and delete and move, as 
> well as maintain. For more info on portable apps check out:
> http://portableapps.com/
>
It sounds like a good idea.

I can easily see the "easy to install, delete and move" - but I'm not 
quite so sure about the "easy to maintain". It seems like there might be 
issues with any new version wishing to retain the existing user 
preferences and data.

>
> Any thoughts about this before I take the leap?

I'd be interested in your thoughts on how you'll lay out the contents 
within the single folder.
Maybe 3 (typically) sub-folders - application, prefs and data ?
    (with the user having the choice of putting data elsewhere, of course).

How do portable apps work out for the non-portable user ?
I currently have some (semi-) portable data - I have the same set of 
apps (but sometimes different prefs) set up on each machine I use 
regularly, and a flash-drive of my documents / data. So I can go from 
"home" to "work" computers with only the flash-drive full of data, and 
use the apps that are installed. Access to the local hard disks are 
significantly faster than my USB-1 flash drive, so I'd see a performance 
hit if I used the apps from that instead.

That wouldn't be important if I was taking advantage of the portable 
apps (e.g. Internet cafe, or visiting friends) when the convenience 
would far outweigh the performance issue. I think this simply means that 
a "portable app" should be able to easily use data (and maybe even 
prefs) from a different location, but there may be other implications I 
haven't thought of yet. 

I think I'll download Firefox etc. from the site, use it exclusively for 
a week or two and see what issues I run into before joining you in that 
leap ...

One more thought - are you considering cross-platform portable apps ??
A single folder that contains Windows + Mac + Linux apps ... to allow 
people to use whichever machine type is available; one step further than 
the portableapps site has done, but would be really cool, I think.


-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.15/223 - Release Date: 06/01/2006