[crave420fubar]

Relative Paths
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A relative path is an incomplete path that allows the OS to assume certain things. An example is "\desktop\firefox.exe"

But when using a shortcut (aka LNK) this will not work due to poor programing in the OS. The reason is that when you click a shortcut the OS starts from the main drive (usually C:) and requires an absolute path. however this is not completely true as there are specific caracters that are meant to be unknown variables. These are called wildcards.

? = one unknown character
* = one or more unknown character

So to write a path for your Firefox portable app if you use "\firefox\firefox.exe" or "L:\firefox\firefox.exe" it will not work but if you write it like "*:\firfox\firefox.exe" it should work.

Why I say "Should"
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As I said/typed before wild cards represent an unknown character and this means that if you have firefox installed on any drive with a same file structure it may open that or just get confused. Example: If you have Firefox installed on your C drive like so "c:\firefox\firefox.exe" and you portable firefox on your flash drive say like so "L:\firefox\firefox.exe" then the OS can not tell what you wanted to do as the relative path of both files would be the same "*:\firefox\firefox.exe".

In Short
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1. place your portable app in a uniqely named folder (something that that app would not normally be placed in)
2. Make a shortcut that points to the file you want
3. edit the shortcut (start in not target) and place a wildcard (*) as the drive descriptor in the path. (make sure the rest of the path is correct)
4. try it out.

:) got root?