Candidate PAD submission sites : Java Glossary

menu

PAD file Format	No Hassle Sites	PAD Submitting Tips
PAD Editors	AppVisor Sites	PAD Submission Services
PAD Creating Tips	Hassle Sites	Mini PAD Submitter
PADSites	Candidate Sites	Automated PAD Submitters
Manual PAD Submission	Dead Sites	Links
Important Sites	Money Handling

Introduction

AppVisor is a service of ASP (Association of Shareware Professionals). You can submit your PADs (Portable Application Descriptions) describing all the programs you have written free or trialware to http://publisher.appvisor.com and they make them available to all the PADSites who will display them in a pleasing way to the public, and help people find suitable programs, rate them etc.

Advantages

• Programmers have to submit their PADs to only one place.
• Programmers no longer have to deal with thousands of incompatible submission schemes.
• Individual PADSites do not have to deal with filtering out PAD (Portable Application Description) submissions of spam and malware. That is all centrally managed by ASP and done only once.
• PADSites cannot blackmail you to provide back links.

Disadvantages

• You are not allowed to post or distribute your Advisor-prepared PADs.
• The PADSites must pay ASP to download each PAD. However, ASP filters out most of the junk, so the fee is probably worth it.
• Submitting to AppVisor is quite onerous. You must login and use their inept, slow, PAD editor instead of the earlier PADGEN.exe utility.
• If the AppVisor server is down, nobody in the entire world can work on their PADs or fetch PADs for PADsites.
• You cannot make bulk changes to your stable of PADs.
• You cannot use custom programs to compose or edit your PADs.
• ASP now has the power of life and death over your ability to distribute your programs. In my particular case Americans have often threatened to kill me because they did not like my politics or sexuality. I don’t appreciate such people having the absolute power to censor my other works in retaliation.
• The AppVisor editor advise programmers to lie to increase their ratings and to code their PADs, not according to the spec, but to cater to PADSite sloppy interpretations of the spec. That is not the sort of thing you expect from a standards issuing body.
• It puts all PADsites on rigorously equal footing . They all have the same set of programs to choose from. They can no longer compete on their ability to attract submissions.
• It is easier that ever for a PADSite to be parked or repurposed without ASP noticing. At least before the Submission page would usually get a 404 as an indication of trouble.
• All PAD extensions have been discontinued, including PADMap and PADRing.
• You, as programmer, have no control over which sites your PAD is submitted to.

Tips

• On the appvisor site, click start ⇒ pad editor ⇒ import to import a PAD version 3 or 4 you have edited manually yourself. Reputedly it will override any existing PAD, though I have not yet tried it. This is usually much faster than creating and maintaining a PAD 4 with the online editor.
• When you update a PAD with the AppVisor editor, you must both SAVE and PUBLISH to have the changes take effect.
• You cannot rename a program, though the AppVisor editor will let you. You must create a new PAD from scratch. Even if you could get AppVisor sorted out, many PADsites do not let you rename programs.

List of AppVisor PADsites

The following is a list of sites who use the PADs submitted (or more accurately composed at) http://publisher.appvisor.com/. You will notice that only a small fraction of PADsites have converted over to PAD4 and AppVisor submission. Further, the total number of PADsites is dropping precipitously. It was a mistake to implement the new system without a lot of input from both developers and PADSite managers.

PAD Sites using AppVisor

PAD Sites using AppVisor
Logo	#	Home	Submit	Notes
	1.	Appvisor		Submit via AppVisor.
	2.	CoolComputing		Submit via AppVisor.
DownloadFromUs	3.	DownloadFromUs		Submit via AppVisor. They have not customised their site with a logo.
	4.	Lo4d		Submit via AppVisor.
	5.	NewDownloadnet		Submit via AppVisor.
	6.	OrbitCD		Submit via AppVisor.
	7.	RepositoryAppvisor		Submit via AppVisor.
	8.	SoftSoftRu		Submit via AppVisor.
SoftUdm4	9.	SoftUdm4		Submit via AppVisor. They have not customised their site with a logo.
	10.	UpdateStar		Submit via AppVisor.
	11.	WaySofts		Submit via AppVisor.