By this time you should have enough knowledge about how to create a portable launcher. You’ve seen that there’s no simple method that works for every software. Sometimes it may take a lot of time to create one but in other cases it’ll take only a few minutes.
When you become more and more experienced, the time you spent on creating a portable app will be only the fraction of that you spent on it now. You’ll see that all I wrote here is only the basics, it’s up to you and your creativity to make better portables.
Sometimes you’ll come across softwares that cannot be made portable, or at least not with this method. But NSIS can do a lot more than I discussed here. In fact, this is only the tip of the iceberg, just go to the NSIS Forum and see what topics are there. And NSIS is only an install maker software, imagine what could a hardcore programmer do if he begin producing portables… Sky’s the limit, I think.
I cannot finish this guide without mentioning Thinstall Virtualization Suite. It brings a brand new approach to creating (or modifying) applications that run without installation. Info about it from their website:
Thinstall is an Application Virtualization Platform that enables complex software to be delivered as self-contained EXE files which can run instantly with zero installation from any data source.
Furthermore, thinstalled applications can run even if the user has no admin rights on the computer and they do not use the Windows registry. They run in a portable manner but it’s an entirely new technology, that’s why we call them virtual or thinstalled applications.
Maybe that’s the way this whole portable-thing will go, but right now hand-made portable (or portablized) applications are more reliable than their thinstalled counterparts, I think. There are so many question marks about thinstalled applications. Some programs cannot be thinstalled but portable versions of them are working good, and vice versa. So which one is better? The one that works, I think, no matter if it is portable or thinstalled.
I think we’ll see a lot of happenings in the portable field in the following months and years, so stay tuned.
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