Use Skype Portable to make Skype-to-Skype calls, video calls, and send instant messages to your friends and family from any computer. Pidgin Portable is an instant message client that allows you to stay in touch with your buddies on Google Talk, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, among other networks. It has support for IMAP/POP and RSS, quick message search, and customizable views. It’s the portable version of the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client. XAMPP is a lightweight, preconfigured server that includes recent versions of Apache, MySQL, and PHP, allowing you to run most websites and web apps directly from it.įor sending and receiving email on the go, Thunderbird Portable is the best option. If you want to test out your website from any machine without having an internet connection, you can turn a USB flash drive into a portable webserver. Some of the many useful features are an FTP site manager, color picker, tabbed interface, CSS editing, and a fully customizable interface. It is similar to Microsoft Frontpage or Dreamweaver.
It can be used portably if you install the add-on into Firefox Portable.įor developing websites, KompoZer is an easy-to-use web editor that is based on the same Gecko engine that powers Firefox and Thunderbird. FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Firefox which provides easy access to FTP/SFTP servers.
FileZilla has firewall support, SSL and SFTP support, and an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. If you are creating a website and need FTP software, FileZilla is a good, free, portable option for a standalone FTP program.
If you need to be able to browse the web anonymously, xB Browser is a free portable browser that encrypts your browsing activities so no one can track where you go and what you do online. You can also use Iron Browser, which is based on Chromium and is optimized for privacy and security. Most of the popular browsers are available as portable programs, including Firefox (the settings for which can be backed up using the portable program, MozBackup), Opera, Google Chrome, and even Chromium, which is the open source version of Google Chrome. There are several options for portable web browsers. It’s a free alternative to Camtasia by TechSmith. It also allows you to use basic paint tools to edit or enhance pictures and can batch convert pictures.ĬamStudio is a free, portable application that allows you to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and save it to a video file or a streaming Flash video. IrfanView Portable is a compact but fast image viewer for Windows that supports pictures, vector graphics, animated images, movies, icon files, among other types of graphic files. If all you need to do is view images and not edit them, XnView Portable is an easy-to-use photo viewer, organizer and converter. If you need a vector image editor, Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor with features similar to programs like Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw. Learn about what you can do with GIMP Portable in our article about editing images and photos. You can also use it to convert images among many formats. It can act as a simple paint program or an expert quality photo retouching program. There are several options available for portable programs to view and edit pictures. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and for Windows you can download a portable version from the site. The program automatically saves your progress, and, when you open the program, it reloads the last files you had open, so you can jump right back into your writing.
If you need a minimalist, distraction-free word processor that allows you to just crank out text without all the extra bloated features you don’t need, FocusWriter is a good option. FluentNotepad is a Notepad replacement that contains the Ribbon UI.
Notepad++ is a full-featured source code editor and Notepad replacement with syntax highlighting and syntax folding support and the ability to open multiple documents at once.
Metapad can be run on a PC or from a USB flash drive. There are several options for portable Notepad replacements.