I don't really understand the logic behind this comment, so maybe we can work it out here.tripex: IrfanView is not stealth or even just portable when you activate file associations or shell functions. For this the exe has to be alway on the same place. On a fresh machine or if you move the app folder you need to reregister your desired file associations and of course they are written to the registry. ALL other settings are portable via ini.
We all know that file associations and shell extensions are not portable. So if you ask Irfanview to register file associations or shell extensions, it is assumed you are prepared to deal with the non-portability.
On the other hand, if you value portability a lot, then you should not ask Irfanview to register file associations or shell extensions. So what exactly is the problem? Are we asking the author of Irfanview to figure out a way to do file associations and shell extensions portably (which technically can't be done), or are we asking the author of Irfanview not to provide these functions (which might be useful to some users)?