PortableApps.com is a website that distributes free applications for Windows that have been packaged for portability. These portable applications are intended to be used from removable storage devices such as USB flash drives .
8-487: The site was founded by John T. Haller and includes contributions from over 100 people, including developers, designers, and translators. PortableApps.com started out as a Haller's personal website hosting a portable version of Mozilla Firefox in March 2004. He then expanded the project to include Mozilla Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org . The open-source group of portable programs outgrew his personal website and he moved it to
16-472: A community site, PortableApps.com. The site currently hosts various projects created by forum members, and is also used for bug reporting and suggestions. Some PortableApps distributions are hosted on SourceForge . Application installers designed for use with the PortableApps.com menu follow the convention of using filenames ending in a paf .exe extension, include HTML documentation, and store data in
24-449: Is a repackaged version of Mozilla Firefox created by John T. Haller . The application allows Firefox to be run from a USB flash drive , CD-ROM , or other portable device on any Windows computer or Linux / Unix computer running Wine . The program does not require Firefox to be installed on the computer, nor does it leave personal information on the computer or interfere with any installed versions of Firefox, however, installation on
32-629: Is used to make applications portable by handling path redirection, environment variable changes, file and directory movement, configuration file path updates. and similar changes, as configured. The PortableApps.com Launcher allows software to be made portable without any modification. All modern apps use PAL and the installers are made using the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System . Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition (formerly known as Portable Firefox and commonly known as Firefox Portable )
40-594: The Data directory. Installers intended for use with the PortableApps.com menu can be either NSIS installers that are generated with the PortableApps.com Installer, compressed archives with self extractors, or a custom Windows executable. The majority of applications can run on most computers with Windows 2000 or later. Many apps will also run under Wine on Unix-like operating systems. Older versions of many apps support Windows 95/98/Me, but no new releases support these systems. The PortableApps.com Launcher (also known as PAL)
48-575: The computer's data storage device is possible. The program is not totally portable, it can't run multiple instances of Firefox out of the box . It is compatible with Windows 7 , Windows 8 , Windows 10 , Windows 11 as well as Wine on Unix-like systems. Although recent versions have serious compatibility issues with WinPE XP and BartPE XP, the old version 2.0.0.20 is compatible with Windows 98 , Me , and PE XP and 2000. Firefox Portable retains all of Mozilla Firefox's abilities such as extensions and automatic updating. Modifications to reduce
56-445: The number of writes to the flash drive have also been added. The web cache and browser history were previously disabled under the release of 2.0. Firefox Portable's ability to delete cookies and the download history on exit is not enabled by default, as per a licensing agreement with Mozilla . Personal settings, bookmarks , and any installed extensions and themes are stored on the flash drive along with Firefox Portable. This allows
64-492: The user to move from computer to computer without losing application settings. Plugins such as Flash Player and Shockwave Player cannot be installed to Portable Firefox in the usual sense, but the plug in files can be copied from a local installation to the appropriate portable folder. Flash Player Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include
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