Default programs in Windows 7; progress in ease of use

[mrsimpleton]

I've been using portable apps for a long time. Recently, I thought that given this benefit of portable apps, I'd move some of my apps over to a different folder for organization sake. I was prepared to handle changing a few file type associations.

Turns out this was a big mistake. Windows 7 won't let me reassign my file type associations and I'm getting an odd bug where FileZilla won't respect the new location for my Notepad++ Portable location. So now I'm thinking I'll probably just have to return to non-portable apps for some my major prorgrams to avoid the hassle.

I started using portable apps thinking that these were the future, given that the extra space was generally negligible and it made it much easier to move often just to understand and navigate the programs. But I guess maybe I'm wrong. Is anyone at Microsoft clued in to making sure portable programs play well with Windows 7?

[Emka]

If I understand you correctly:
The problem you've described is, IMO, not the fault of the concept of portability since one usually tries to avoid that type of registry use with portable software; and even if you do associate file types with portable software, it is natural for Windows not to be able to keep track of changing executable locations.
You probably would not have had this file association issue with installed software because you would not have been able to move them around on your harddrive(s) without breaking basic functionality.
Maybe something like FileTypesMan can help you: http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=1478
(Isn't there something for portable file type associations out there, too?)

[dany]

(Isn't there something for portable file type associations out there, too?)

Yep, take a Coffee. There's Assox too.

[tproli]

Assox is not 100% compatible with Windows 7 but basic functionality is available as I know.

I'm using Total Commander's internal file associations instead of system-wide associations. You can use Double Commander and other file managers too for this purpose.

[webfork]

(Isn't there something for portable file type associations out there, too?)

Yep, take a Coffee.

Been using Coffee for years. Setup is a little tedious but once set up you can forget it. Works great.

[webfork]

Turns out this was a big mistake. Windows 7 won't let me reassign my file type associations and I'm getting an odd bug where FileZilla won't respect the new location for my Notepad++ Portable location. So now I'm thinking I'll probably just have to return to non-portable apps for some my major prorgrams to avoid the hassle.

Its unlikely FileZilla will handle relative links in its custom editor settings, but you should be able to use hard links (e.g. x:\portable\notepad++\notepad++.exe)

I started using portable apps thinking that these were the future, given that the extra space was generally negligible and it made it much easier to move often just to understand and navigate the programs. But I guess maybe I'm wrong. Is anyone at Microsoft clued in to making sure portable programs play well with Windows 7?

As anything they do revolves around software not competing with Windows or Office, it seems unlikely. If I was Microsoft, I would look at self-contained applications as a gateway to emulation on WINE, which enables Mac/Linux by leaking software to competing operating systems. However, I would argue with Microsoft employees that this is a way to make Windows more secure by isolating applications, letting people take their software and data with them, and getting Windows back into computer labs that are seeing more Linux/Macs in an era when most people just need a Web browser.

There has been discussion (first noticed by guiness) of a portable workspaces in Windows 8, but that's not the same thing: it will likely only work for one version of Windows and doesn't address your issue with file associations pointing to relative path locations.

[guinness]

I've not heard much since April about Portable workspaces.

[SYSTEM]

I started using portable apps thinking that these were the future, given that the extra space was generally negligible and it made it much easier to move often just to understand and navigate the programs. But I guess maybe I'm wrong. Is anyone at Microsoft clued in to making sure portable programs play well with Windows 7?

As anything they do revolves around software not competing with Windows or Office, it seems unlikely. If I was Microsoft, I would look at self-contained applications as a gateway to emulation on WINE, which enables Mac/Linux by leaking software to competing operating systems. However, I would argue with Microsoft employees that this is a way to make Windows more secure by isolating applications, letting people take their software and data with them, and getting Windows back into computer labs that are seeing more Linux/Macs in an era when most people just need a Web browser.

There has been discussion (first noticed by guiness) of a portable workspaces in Windows 8, but that's not the same thing: it will likely only work for one version of Windows and doesn't address your issue with file associations pointing to relative path locations.

Microsoft doesn't seem to like the idea of portability.

They realize that an user likely wants to use the same settings on multiple computers. What did Microsoft implement in order to address that? Online settings synchronization, which requires a Windows Live ID. Oh, and because settings are stored online, Microsoft can use the trendy word "cloud".

I hate Microsoft.

(Posted from my portable Kubuntu.)

[Midas]

See the following post for a convergent and detailed assessment of MS deprecating influence in the field of text processing: viewtopic.php?p=66576#p66576...

[abacusFanboi]

... What did Microsoft implement in order to address that? Online settings synchronization, which requires a Windows Live ID. Oh, and because settings are stored online, Microsoft can use the trendy word "cloud".

While reading about many backup/sync programs, I've been disappointed by the same 'cloud' approach. But a lot of users must like things like 'online bookmark synchronization'. Unless end-to-end encrypted, the cloud thing bothers me.
I also remember the old Netscape days when search engine would find a person's bookmarks as an html file. Although, I sometimes liked finding these because the person might have had good bookmarks for the topic the search engine found in the bookmark file.