Technically it should be not that difficult. System service is only used so that FlashFolder works for administrative programs started from restricted user accounts. But you could start the portable version via "run as" to achieve the same effect.
I have to try what happens if FF is started from a pen drive, the DLL gets loaded into some processes and then the pen drive is removed.
It would also need some work to change how the profile is stored. It doesn't make much sense for a portable version to store settings in the registry.
Propably it would also make sense to implement placeholder-pathes then. E. g. you could enter %USERPROFILE% as a path to automatically get the user directory, which can be different on different machines.
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I am a developer at PortableApps.com, an open source community dedicated to creating launchers to make some standard desktop applications portable.
I'm not sure how FlashFolder would work as a portable application. Does running a service require administration privileges? If so, making it portable seems kind of out of the question, unless you can ensure you will have admin access.
For settings storage, using HKCU in the registry is fine, the launchers we write (using the NSIS scripting language) will backup the key if it exists on the host machine, move the portable settings into place, then when the program is terminated, the launcher moves the local settings back into place.
The best way to store settings would be an ini file, or xml config file, that has a user-configurable path, or a command line switch to change it's location. This way, the launcher wouldn't have to mess with %USERPROFILE% or %APPDATA% and risk corrupting a local installation.
An example for the command line switch could be FlashFolder.exe -profile "[path to FF]\settings" this command would tell FlashFolder to look for it's settings in a subfolder of the main app called settings.
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Is it possible to make Flash Folder in portable way so it can be used on a pendrive?
Technically it should be not that difficult. System service is only used so that FlashFolder works for administrative programs started from restricted user accounts. But you could start the portable version via "run as" to achieve the same effect.
I have to try what happens if FF is started from a pen drive, the DLL gets loaded into some processes and then the pen drive is removed.
It would also need some work to change how the profile is stored. It doesn't make much sense for a portable version to store settings in the registry.
Propably it would also make sense to implement placeholder-pathes then. E. g. you could enter %USERPROFILE% as a path to automatically get the user directory, which can be different on different machines.
I am a developer at PortableApps.com, an open source community dedicated to creating launchers to make some standard desktop applications portable.
I'm not sure how FlashFolder would work as a portable application. Does running a service require administration privileges? If so, making it portable seems kind of out of the question, unless you can ensure you will have admin access.
For settings storage, using HKCU in the registry is fine, the launchers we write (using the NSIS scripting language) will backup the key if it exists on the host machine, move the portable settings into place, then when the program is terminated, the launcher moves the local settings back into place.
The best way to store settings would be an ini file, or xml config file, that has a user-configurable path, or a command line switch to change it's location. This way, the launcher wouldn't have to mess with %USERPROFILE% or %APPDATA% and risk corrupting a local installation.
An example for the command line switch could be FlashFolder.exe -profile "[path to FF]\settings" this command would tell FlashFolder to look for it's settings in a subfolder of the main app called settings.