Every organization out there places limits on what general users are able to do with the information systems they are using. In most cases users are not able to install software because the organization responsible for the computer has determined that allowing users to interact with the registry and system directories opens the information system up to exploitation which could lead to the compromise of the entire network. This is a very real threat and isn’t taken lightly by most IT departments but what many people don’t realize is that there is no need to “install” many of the programs that we use on a daily basis. A treasure trove of “Portable Apps” for the Windows environment can be found @ http://www.portableapps.com/apps.

Lets start by downloading and extracting the portable Firefox app. You’ll find that it works just like the standard firefox app you download from the Mozilla website and install. You can still install plugins like Adblock Plus, Fasterfox, DownloadStatusBar and many others.

The Web 2.0 movement is all about user generated & interactive content and what better way to provide interactivity with an appealing interface than Flash? I don’t think a better front end has come along yet but when I went to install the flash plugin I hit a speedbump that set me back for a few minutes. The installer wants to interact with the registry and the system directories. After a few minutes thinking about the problem and reading about similar situations online I extracted the installer I downloaded from the flash website and copied 2 files (flashplayer.xpt, & NPSWF32.dll) to the \FirefoxPortable\App\firefox\plugins directory. To make life easy for everyone I have zipped them up.

Download the file linked below and extract to \FirefoxPortable\Apps\firefox\plugins If you have firefox installed already and just can’t install the flash plugin you can download the same file and extract the files into the plugins folder in your firefox profile

Flash Plugin files for Firefox.