This is a guest post by Zach. Where to start. Oh I know :) hey guys my name is
Zach Thibeau and I work at a site we all know and love called PortableApps.com, I'm one of the official Developers and also a Release Team Member that checks the quality of apps before they are released to the general public.
So I bet you all are wondering what is exactly a portable app; well the best definition is found at our website but for the sake of it I'll post here.
"A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind."
So this basically means what it says :) Now not every application isn't really portable, our applications uses a middleman called a launcher that does all the work of saving your settings on your flash drive. Without out this "Launcher" your app would still yes run but your data would save on the host PC for anyone to look at and the data you were working on will be left on that computer.
Now how we make our launchers is through a scripting language called
NSIS, now normally NSIS is used for making windows based installers to install an application, but our use for it is based on some of the functions in NSIS that are customizable to help save settings to your drive and the install window is set to hidden so you see nothing but your application you want to run.
To let you know our site is community driven, so anyone that knows of a piece of an OSI Licensed Application (OSI: Open-Source Initiative) is a potential candidate to be made portable however stuff that use the Microsoft .net framework is not truly portable since not everyone has a computer that runs the .net framework. Now computers vista and up does have it pre-installed though.
Also another aspect of PortableApps than the above mentioned is that if you have an issue with an application from our site, you can come to our forums
here, and post your issue there or come and get live support at
here, which is an online IRC interface where there is usually a developer there on hand to help you answer your questions or concerns.