Marc Gregoire’s Blog

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler in response to the Beta testers:

• The help is now available offline AND online. An option called “Use the online web-based help” is added to “Tools > Program Settings > Miscellaneous” that you can use to switch between online and offline help. With this, users can always consult the online help when there are compatibility issues with the offline help file, which some users experienced when running the offline help on Vista.
• New option in the layout editor to vertically and horizontally center 1 object to another object.
• You can now choose whether a “Move To Hotkeys” or a “Give Tags Hotkeys” is executed on the selected wallpapers in the main window of Wallpaper Cycler OR on the current wallpaper on the desktop.
• Cycle once a day and do not exit at windows logon

I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler in response to the Beta testers:

• The “Find Non-Existing Wallpapers” now also properly checks for the existence of URL wallpapers instead of skipping them.
• In the effects editor you could enter values outside the allowed range. For example, for transparency you could type 900.
• In the layout editor, editing things in the Effects dialog gave some unexpected behaviour. Suppose a wallpaper object had a transparency and you clicked the percentage box and set it to e.g. 0 and press enter to confirm. Next, when you clicked this text box again, it didn’t become editable. But despite it not being editable, if you’d enter e.g. 60 and do something else, like clicking the Merge mode box or resizing the column width, the percentage will change to show 60.
• In the righthand properties (e.g. in the layout editor), you couldn’t tab through all properties: you got stuck whenever a value (text, number) can be typed in the property because the value becomes selected when you tabbed to its attribute.
• Help file, page about Layout Editor: Calendar Notes Object contains a few “typos”, %m is displayed as %<linebreak>m. Same for %w and %W when Help window is too small.

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler in response to the Beta testers: 

• You can now specify multiple masks (up to 10) for a mask effect and WPC will choose one of these masks randomly.

I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler in response to the Beta testers:

• Pressing the first letter of a wallpaper in the thumbnail list to jump to the wallpaper didn’t work.
• After running “Manage Thumbnail Database” the wallpaper list in the main window is now automatically updated.
• Thumbnail generation was still not as fast as it could in certain cases.
• When adding an existing URL wallpaper and then deleting the image from the website, the thumbnail was not updated.
• When editing the tags via give tags hotkeys and the wallpaper is selected in WPC the tag changes are now reflected in the tag-listing in the sidebar of wpc.
• When moving a wallpaper with a move to hotkey and the WPC window is visible the wallpaper listing is now updated to reflect the changes. 
• When “Adding an URL Wallpaper” that is non-existing, WPC does not complain, it just adds the wallpaper and made it black. Instead of black, the red sign is now shown and a note “Not downloadable or not valid.”.
• Opening “Find & Replace Wallpaper…” makes the currently selected category empty. Closing the replace window shows the content again. Same with “Find Duplicate” window and for “Find Non Existing Wallpapers…”. Now, instead of removing all wallpapers, a note “temporarily hidden during find & replace” is shown.
• Suppose WPC window is visible, with a category of wallpapers visible. Now open explorer and add a wallpaper to WPC using the shellintegration. Make sure you select the category that is visible in WPC. The view within WPC is not updated once this image is added, you have to go to another category and come back before you see it.
• When the statistic window is open and WPC cycles, the stats were not updated automatically.
• Sometimes the notes rendered in the calendar notes object were clipped on the right side.
• “You can specify which of the columns should be shown in the details view by right clicking on the header in the list.” This was not working on Vista.

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler in response to the Beta testers:

• In the following cases Wallpaper Cycler will check for non existing fonts and give a warning when missing fonts were found:
  • Opening/importing a .WCL file.
  • Importing a Calendar Object template.
  • Importing a Calendar Notes Object template.
  • Importing a layout.
• Added the following functions to the COM interface so they can for example be used in a future Vista Gadget.
  • RerenderCurrentWallpaper()
  • NextWallpaperFromSameCat()
  • RestartCycling()
  • SetNoWallpaperOnDesktop()
  • RefreshDesktop()
  • ShowQuoteEditor()
  • ShowNotesEditor()
  • ShowCalendarNotesEditor()
  • ShowManageFeeds()
  • ShowDisplayProperties()
• New option for Calendar Notes objects: “Header Cell Weekend Day With Note” formatting.
• You can now rename items in the tree on the left of the main window by simply pressing F2 or by clicking it with the mouse a second time while it is already selected.
• Tray icon menu contains an item to open quote editor.
• Sorting in thumbnail view: A new menu item in Wallpapers > View > Sort.

I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler in response to the Beta testers:

• The layout template “Wallpaper with ‘paper’-border” would display incorrectly on secondary monitors.
• When browsing for a Calendar or Calendar Notes Template, WPC now automatically goes to the folder containing the installed templates.
• When you went to the Quotes Sites menu in the Quotes Editor and closed that menu without clicking any item and then closing the Quotes Editor, WPC would still open some quotes site.
• “Rerender Wallpaper” in Tools menu now has an icon.
• Vista Gadget now has 2 rows of buttons and the following new buttons are added: “Open WPC Window”, “Set No Wallpaper On Desktop” and “Rerender Wallpaper”.

• Removed the cycling sound when clicking on “Set No Wallpaper On Desktop”.
• Search Folder Edit Window: Tabbed as the Edit Category Windows. Two tabs “General” and “Search Actions”.
• When changing the RenderDesktopToFolder setting, WPC now moves the current rendered desktop to the new folder and thus deletes it from the old folder.
• The gradient banner in the settings window now has correct left and right margins on Vista.
• Sometimes the Tags-Page in the browser bar would say “Enable tags for selected wallpapers” even when a layout category was selected. This has now been renamed to “Enable tags for selected items”.
• Checked all Calendar Object templates and Calendar Notes Object templates for the correct Prog string, which should be:
          <Calendar Prog=”NuonSoft Wallpaper Cycler 3.5.0.xy”>
  or
          <CalendarNotes Prog=”NuonSoft Wallpaper Cycler 3.5.0.xy”>
  with xy some version. The string should not contain “Debug”, which was the case in most files.
• All \ characters in wallpaper and layout category names are automatically replaced by / because \ is not allowed.
• Settings > Document > Give Tags Hotkeys and Quick Disable Hotkeys -> the tags browser window now has multiple columns.
• Search Folder Command “Find Tags” settings now displays tags in multiple columns.
• Added a line in the CPU Load monitoring settings window to divide the settings in 2 logical block.
• Settings -> smart orientation -> the tag-listings has now multiple columns.
• Settings -> Document -> the “Slideshow mode” page is now also at the root.
• When selecting multiple images in the “Add Wallpaper Image” dialog, the preview now says that multiple files are selected instead of “couldn’t open image”.
• The tags-tab in wallpaper- and layout-category properties now shows the tags in multiple columns.
• When selecting “My Layouts” -> it says “no layouts defined.” -> even though there are layouts defined in the subcategories of “my layouts”. -> Changed to “No layouts defined in this category”
• Portrait rendering issue:
  • Show a portrait wallpaper with portrait layout (tag-based configured)
  • Show a non-portrait wallpaper with non-portrait layout
  • Delete non-portrait wallpaper from list
  • Hit re-render
  • Re-render functionality detects the wallpaper to re-render is no longer there and will take the previous wallpaper, but renders it with the non-portrait lay-out.
• When importing notes in the Calendar Notes Editor, exact duplicate notes are skipped during import.
• Calendar Notes Editor: The textbox is now a bit bigger by default and you can resize the textbox now.
• Calendar Notes Editor: The textbox flickers quite a bit when resizing the window.
• Select a Wallpaper Category (in for example move to hotkeys) didn’t show pluses at the root level elements.
• When disabling a category with the quick disable hotkey and the WPC window is visible, the tree is not updated to reflect the changes.
• Removed the sub-menu in Tools for the Thumbnail Database and moved the Manage Thumbnail Database directly into the Tools menu.
• The Apply button in the Tools > Program Settings window has been removed for the time being.
• Layout Category Edit Properties -> Goto “Tags”, type in a new tag and hit enter. Now try to go to the first tab. This doesn’t work here. I have to for example give focus back to the tag-list and then I can go to the first tab.
• Clicking help in “text editor”-window opens the notes editor help, not the text editor help.
• Horizontal scrollbar is shown in the following listboxes when the items are getting too width:
  • The listbox with layouts in Settings > Document > Wallpaper Default Settings.
  • The listbox with layouts when clicking on “Specify Layout” in the browser bar on the right of the main window.
  • The listbox in Wallpaper Category Settings > Layouts.
  • The listbox containing the cycle at times in Settings > Document > Wallpaper Cycling.
  • The listbox containing the layouts in Settings > Document > Screen Saver.
  • The listbox with hotkeys in Settings > Document > Give Tags Hotkeys.
  • The listbox with hotkeys in Settings > Document > Quick Disable Hotkeys.
  • The listbox with hotkeys in Settings > Document > Move To Hotkeys.
  • The wallpaper listbox in the tags-details window when multiple wallpapers are selected.
  • The “Available Effects” and “Effects” listboxes in the setup effects dialog in the layout editor.
  • The listbox containing the extensions to be skipped in Settings > Global > Skip Extensions.
  • The listbox with the RSS feeds in the Manage Feeds window.
  • The listbox in the Layout Template dialog.
  • When deleting a layout that is linked to a wallpaper category or wallpaper a Conflicts dialog is shown containing a listbox.
  • The listbox in Wallpaper Category Properties > Folder Links
  • When adding wallpapers via Shellintegration, a dialog is shown with the wallpapers that will be added. In that dialog the list of wallpapers now has a horizontal scrollbar if required.
  • The listbox in Settings > Document > Layout Cycling.
• Quotes-editor -> help-menu -> item “contents…” renamed to “More about quotes…”.
• Tags editor: When adding a new tag, a banner explains that you can use a comma to separate tags to quickly add several tags at once.
• Changed calender into calendar on a few places.
• When clicking the Move Up/Down buttons when sorting is enabled, a message is shown that moving items is not possible in that case.
• When clicking “start cycling” and “Cycle with delay”/”cycle at specific times” are both disabled, a dialog gives a warning and now has a link to go directly to the cycling settings instead of only describing the steps.
• When no “Open Image With…” Program is configured initially, WPC gives a warning message. A link is added in  this window to immediately go to the correct configuration page instead of only describing the steps.
• Some screensaver effects are terribly slow when the desktop is still visible underneath, so for rendering the first image (on Vista).