Sean Wallbridge
Technorati: 8H833AZX68VQ
Every once in a while I find myself at Portableapps.com because its uber handy.
Essentially, they have taken a number of popular applications and turned them into standalone applications (the “install” process simply creates a folder structure and an EXE to launch and doesn’t install to the registry, start menu, etc.).
In other words, if you are on a server and don’t have the ability to install things but need to run something (today I wanted to be able to open a PDF but didn’t want to install software on the server that was in use), I simply found Foxit Reader on portableapps.com, downloaded it and ran the “install” (again, not an install). I specified a folder and it extracted the bits it needed to run, without actually installing anything on the server.
Anyways – useful in a pinch. www.portableapps.com – maybe it will help you too. The current list of apps is here: http://portableapps.com/apps
As a side note, you can make “your own portable app” with their solution – also useful. But often I find others already have and the tool is in the gallery. Examples include:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- FoxIt Reader