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
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