PortableApps (R34 Mod)
Menu Modification Tutorial

The official PortableAppsMenu is extremely simple and stable. Install the "Suite Light" or "Suite Standard" on your USB flash drive, external hard drive or other removeable storage medium, and you will end up with a menu system pre-loaded with all the basic portable applications installed, ready to use immediately.

This makes it very easy to get started, but the limitations of the menu become quickly apparent. Many people have seen the shortcomings and asked for various features. The official PortableAppsMenu has been slow to implement changes. Since the PortableApps.com menu is entirely open source, people can take the menu code and made changes on their own. This has given rise to various menu "modification" projects. The "mods" as they are known, each provide different features and benefits, depending on the author's interest.

Some mod development has been delayed because the authors are hesitant to devise a new system or features that will become obsolete as soon as the official menu addresses that particular issue and makes an "official" method.

Please note that the authors of the menu modifications have come onboard the official PortableApps.com menu project, so everyone expects that the unique features of each mod will eventually be brought home and included in an update to the official menu. The timeline and exact features are unknown.

The R34 Mod Menu is well supported and therefore quite popular. There are almost two hundred different R34 Mod Menu themes available on the PTC website. You'll also find good tutorials providing installation directions and giving more information about the reasons to use the R34 Mod Menu.

You can find help for the PortableApps.com menu, the R34 Mod Menu, SmithTech Menu and Geek Menu on the PortableApps.com Forums. You'll always hear that the mods are "unofficial" and "not supported" by the official PortableApps.com project, but the creators of the mods (and their fans) try to provide insight and support on their own. This is one such effort.

This "tweaking tutorial" is just a bit different from others you may find online. It will pick up where the others leave off. This tutorial is for advanced users who are not afraid to directly (manually) edit various files that are part of the themes.

Each mod has different features and methods. For simplicity sake, this tutorial will stick with R34 Mod Menu. Maybe later I'll expand to include other mods. Many of the methods covered here will work across other mods, but there is no guarantee. Try if you like - it might work, but at worst you'll make a theme unuseable and the Default theme will load. Undo the change, and you're back to where you started.

In this tutorial I'll be showing screen captures of Internet Explorer in action. Everybody has it, and those of you who choose to use something else will understand whatever tool you use on your own computer. By the same token, your favorite text editor will probably do fine editing the various files, although the screen captures will show EditPad Lite (portable).

We will start with the Autorun.inf file found in the root of your USB flash drive, external hard drive, or other media. This file may have hidden and/or system attributes, so you will have to use a file manager that can show you those kinds of files. Internet Exploder Explorer has that capability.

I prefer using FreeCommander which offers multi-window (horizontal or vertical), tabs in each window (for those who want tabs), views many types of files (including pictures and graphics with thumbs), makes archives, unarchives, deletes, wipes (secure deletes), changes attributes, drops to DOS, maintains history (so you can go backwards and forwards through your history just like an internet browser), favorites, multiple languages, and lots more. It is also available in U3 and PortableApps.com paf formats.

The line in the Autorun.inf that starts Icon= tells the menu system where to find the icon to use as the drive image. If you look up to the screen clip above, you'll see the PortableApps.com icon being used as the image for drive J: (in two places).

I will change the line from:
Icon=StartPortableApps.exe to:
Icon=PortableApps\Internet Tools\FirefoxPortable\FirefoxPortable.exe

You can point to any .exe or icon file in this manner. After your drive is dismounted and then remounted, you can see the new drive icon. The screen capture below shows the icon being used in Internet Explorer (which shows the new icon in the Address Bar and in the Folder Tree).

Next, you'll notice the Label= line. This line controls the name for the drive. I've decided to call my drive "PortableJim", although it could be anything! After a drive dismount/remount, the new label shows up in Internet Explorer and is also picked up by the R34 Mod Menu as the drive's name.

In a strange little twist, the official PortableApps.com menu has the capability to change the drive's Label by just clicking on the existing name in the bottom left corner of the menu. This is one of the only places where the official menu is more advanced than any of the mods.

Let's take a look at the language files. If you go into the \PortableApps\PortableAppsMenu\Data\Locale directory, you'll see more than a dozen different language files. You can delete all of them EXCEPT the one that you actually use. This will save you some valuable storage space on that USB flash key and will also speed up backups of your drive (you DO backup your data, don't you?)

In case you have a hard time finding the right directory, the image below shows the directory structure in Internet Explorer. As you can see, I've deleted all of the languages except for english-us.locale which is, of course, the US English menu texts.

A neat thing about the locale files is the ability to change languages. The menu system does this by establishing a variable for every changeable word in the menu, and then assigning something (in some language) to it. When the menu displays, it will show whatever has been placed in that position. In this manner, you could make a copy of the locale file and translate all the words into Klingon or Popeye-the-Sailor or New Yawk tawk.

For the purposes of this example, let's stick with English. Maybe we don't like the word "Video" in the menu and we want it to say "Movies" instead. By going into the english-us.locale file, we can change it to "Movies", save the file, and then restart the menu. It is that easy! You can see the results in this composite screen grab below:

Another interesting Locale file trick is that you can establish hot-keys for the menu items. Keyboard junkies can place an ampersand (the & character) before the letter you want to use as the hot-key.

For example, change the Locale file line:
ICON_MUSIC=Music to:
ICON_MUSIC=&Music

and when you press Alt-M, the music folder will open, as if you had mouse clicked on the Music icon. This covers the main folder icons, but what about hot-keys for the applications and application categories? You can edit the application's name in the menu by right clicking and choosing "rename". Rename with an ampersand in front of the desired hot-key.

For example, right-click on:
Thunderbird Portable menu entry, pick re-name, and save it as:
&Thunderbird Portable

You'll get your Alt-T hot-key to launch Thunderbird Portable AND the menu will even underscore the hot-key just like you'd see in any Windows menu system.

That's it for the first section of the tutorial.

Click here for the second section where we'll take a look at the other folders and files that come with the R34 Mod Menu.