Marc Gregoire’s Blog

After a long development cycle and 2 beta phases, today I can proudly announce that Wallpaper Cycler 3.5.0.97 has gone gold. 8)

Wallpaper Cycler 3.5.0.97 has a lot of new features and bug-fixes. Some of the major new features include:

• Tag support: assign tags to wallpapers, layouts and/or categories.
• Search Folders to get a different view on your wallpapers.
• Smart Orientation for portrait/landscape monitors.
• Faster thumbnail generation.
• Installation possible without being administrator.
• Wizard to guide you with certain actions.
• Windows Vista Gadget to control Wallpaper Cycler.
• “Quick Disable” hotkeys to quickly disable categories/tags.
• Slideshow Mode.
• Statistics.
• …

Learn more about Wallpaper Cycler 3.5.0.97.

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

• The thumbnail file is not kept open all the time anymore, so backup software shouldn’t have problems with it.
• Sometimes the folder synchronization feature kicked in while rebuilding the thumbs database with the thumbnail manager.
• Folder synchronization doesn’t get stuck anymore in a loop when the WCL was saved in one of the folders that was being monitored for changes.

I’m also finalizing the Help File and the new Online Help Site and preparing for a release very soon now… 8)

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

• Black dot appearing in corners sometimes when using small corner rounding values for wallpaper objects with a border of a few pixels.

Also, Beta 2 of Wallpaper Cycler 3.5 is finished and is currently being beta tested by a closed group of beta-testers.

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

• Updated AGG to 2.4.
• You can now configure the CPU monitoring threshold between 0% and 100%.

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

• A message is shown when cpu monitoring/time synchronization was enabled and is being disabled because you are not an administrator anymore.
• The “Day With Note Cell” configuration in the layout calendar settings now properly inherits the values from the “cells” configuration.
• In the calendar notes editor, when you edit something, close it and save & close the layout editor, the calendar notes object on the desktop is not clickable anymore. Double-clicking doesn’t do anything until the next cycle.
• Time Synchronization requires administrative privileges. Now Wallpaper Cycler will check if it has administrative privileges and if not will automatically disable all time synchronization settings. Works also with Vista UAC. + added extra note in help file to describe this.
• CPU Monitoring requires administrative privileges. Now Wallpaper Cycler will check if it has administrative privileges and if not will automatically disable all CPU Monitoring settings. Works also with Vista UAC. + added extra note in help file to describe this.
• Wallpaper Cycler would lose all its “Skip Extensions” and “Most Recent Used” items during a crash report generation.

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).

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

• Open main window with category opened that was open the previous time.
• Enable/Disable tags + hotkeys to quickly enable/disable tags. When a tag is disabled with a hotkey and the current wallpaper on the desktop has that tag, the desktop will be cycled automatically. Wallpapers with disabled tags will not be cycled.
• A “true” default tiling setting. When adding new wallpapers, the tiling setting of those wallpapers will be set to “Default”. You can then easily change the default tiling setting in Tools > Program Settings > Document > Wallpaper Default Settings.
• WPC can now automatically assign a tag like “AspectRatio 4:3” where the 4:3 is automatically calculated based on the added wallpaper or “AspectRatio Uneven”.

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

• Settings Window and Large Fonts gives a few texts that are, with the default window size, not visible.
• Spaces are trimmed from the beginning and ending of a tag.
• You could add tags containing only spaces.
• EXIF: Maximal and Minimal Aperture Canon Maker Notes were sometimes displayed with lots of zeros.
• The little preview that appears in the Add Wallpaper File dialog is much much faster now (for JPG’s)
• Clicking the “folder synchrozing”-balloon didn’t open the result window on top. I had to click it in the windows task bar to actually see it.
• NAS and Folder Links results in reproducable crash.
• Notes-object Text Editor -> using any of the toolbar buttons will not be undoable.
• Doubleclicking the calendar notes object on the desktop opens the edit window. However, double-clicking the object again (while the first edit window is still open AND the WPC Main window is also open) opens a second edit window.
• “Did You know Window” -> there are several tips where the link to the help-file wasn’t working.
• When you hit left while the first wallpaper is rendering in the screensaver, it “goes back” but seeing as there is no previous wallpaper the screen becomes black… -> disabled left-key for first wallpaper.
• Cycle At Times -> Add -> timestamps 1 minutes -> ok -> ok. Next cycle was in 24 hours instead of 1 minute.
• Added filename of currently opened WCL-list in “settings”-window behind “document” settings entry.
• Added a note to the Calender Notes editor to explain that those notes will be used by both the “Calendar” and “Calendar Notes” objects in layouts. This note is also a link to the helpfile with more details.
• The “Find Wallpaper…”-window had no banner
• Made the minimum width/height of layout-editor bigger.
• On the “Find Non Existing Images” results-window, the helpbutton goes to the wrong topic.
• The statistic Window should not have “ok/cancel” buttons, only a “Close” button.
• If you disable “Cycle with delay” and “Cycle at specific times” and WPC is currently cycling, WPC should stop cycling.
• On the “Current WCL Statistic” page, “20 most used wallpapers” is now selected by default.
• Helpfile: EXIF DATA page -> clicking on the link to sourceforge tries to open sourceforge within the same window. -> All external links now open with an external IE window.
• Calendar Notes Editor: Select a day in the second or third month displayed and the view will jump so the month in which you clicked becomes the first displayed. -> Fixed, however, when you click a day in the right part of the window, the left part will still jump so that the current month becomes the first month in that list (this is by design).
• Reduced volume of standard cycling sound.
• Main WPC Wizard: Change ‘Cancel’ to ‘Close’. Categories etc added through it are not undone when you hit ‘Cancel’.
• “Click here to assign tags to this category”: Make the quick-add-tag textbox active by default, so you can start typing immediately.
• “Previous Wallpaper” does not select the new wallpaper like “Next Wallpaper” does.
• Let’s say the category changes at 6:00pm (old ends @5:59) and the wallpaper is also set to change at 18:00:00, it chooses an wallpaper from the old category (it seems to switch the wall before it switches the cat). since the seconds for the fixed times cant be changed there is no easy workaround. -> WPC will now force a category time limit check before each cycle.
• When importing files recursively, the error message that might appear referenced Tools > Options and it should be Tools > Program Settings.

Today I’m pleased to announce the starting of the closed Beta test phase for NuonSoft Wallpaper Cycler 3.5.

Some of the major new features include:

• Tag support.
• Search folders.
• Faster thumbnail generation (3-4 times faster).
• Faster saving of huge lists.
• Vista support.
• All the features and bug fixes posted in this blog.
• And much more …

The Beta test phase will most likely last until the beginning of October. Depending on the number of reports and feedback from our beta testers, the final release of Wallpaper Cycler 3.5 is scheduled for the October to November timeframe.

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler:

• A non-administrator can now install Wallpaper Cycler. 
• Added support for MakerNotes in EXIF for Canon, Olympus and Pentax.
• Finished the help file with description of all new features.

 I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler:

• When deleting a wallpaper from a category WPC now selects the next wallpaper instead of jumping to the top of the list each time a wallpaper is deleted.
• Fixed an issue with URL wallpapers when your cycling time is just 1 or 2 seconds.

I also reviewed the complete tags-code, checked that the Lite version is working, changed some DLL registration to allow for non-administrator installations, moved the screensaver from the Windows system directory to the local Wallpaper Cycler directory to allow non-administrator installations and started to prepare the Beta. Closed Beta testing will start this weekend or early next week.

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler:

• Slideshow Mode: In slideshow mode, Wallpaper Cycler will use a different cycling timeout than in normal cycling mode. You can enable/disable cycling mode from the main window or with a hotkey.
• When you set the tiling mode of a wallpaper object in a layout to “Tile” then you can now choose between the following for the offset calculation:
  • Auto: The offset will be calculated automatically based on the upper-left corner of your monitor.
  • Manual: This allows you to manually specify an offset in pixels.
  • Center: (New) The offset will be calculated automatically such that the image in the middle will be center.
• The “File > Document Settings” and the “Tools > Program Settings” have been merged into 1 dialog to make it easier to find settings. The menu entries “File > Document Settings” and “Tools > Program Settings” are left but now point to the same dialog. So now you have all settings in one place.
• In the calendar notes object in layouts you can now specify the number of days that should be rendered after the current day.
• When you select the “My Wallpapers” category, WPC will not immediately display all wallpapers in the listview but will instead show a little note in the listview to say that this might take a while depending on the number of wallpapers. When you then double click the listview, all wallpapers will be shown. This is to prevent WPC from freezing for a few seconds when you have lots of wallpapers and you select the “My Wallpapers” category.
• You can now get a fullscreen preview of the selected wallpaper. There is a “Preview Wallpaper…” in the menu when you right click a wallpaper or you can use the spacebar on your keyboard to quickly open the preview for the selected wallpaper. The preview can also be closed with the spacebar.
• “Quick Disable” hotkeys: These allow you to define system wide hotkeys to quickly disable a specific category. You can define as many of these hotkeys as you want. When the current wallpaper on your desktop is from a category that you disable with a “Quick Disable” hotkey, Wallpaper Cycler will automatically cycle to the next wallpaper.
  A “Quick Disable” Category hotkey can also be configured to show a hierarchical menu of all your categories from which you select the category to disable.
• Import/export calendar notes.

I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler:

• Saving WCL files is between 2 and 3 times faster now + the save algorithm has been changed as to prevent corruption of the WCL file when Windows is shutting down and Wallpaper Cycler doesn’t get enough time to save its WCL file. 
• When stretching images, sometimes a slight border artifact was visible on the edges of the image. This was especially noticable when enlarging small white wallpapers. 
• When specifying a positive tiling offset for a wallpaper object in a layout, you would see a color bar where there should be a part of the image. The tiling offset parameter should now work correctly with positive and negative offsets.
• The HTML text object editor in the layout editor crashed with:
  <hr><B><FONT size=”18″ face=”Arial” style=”+b-u-s+i”>Top News Headlines</FONT></B>
  -> crashed because no \n after <hr>
• If a category has a large number of files WPC jumps to the top of the list each time a wallpaper is moved to another category. That makes it harder to continue the check of the files. One has to scroll down again to find the last checked wallpaper and continue from that point. WPC now selects the next file in the list after a file is moved to another category.

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler:

• Non-existing wallpapers are shown in red in the details view. In the thumbnails view they are shown with a red sign + “Not valid” as thumbnail.
  (NOTE: this is not implemented for URL wallpapers because checking if an URL wallpaper is still valid would slow WPC down too much when browsing the categories)
• A wallpaper object in a layout can now be linked to a random wallpaper from a selected search folder.
• When you specify a text color for a specific wallpaper, this text color is now also used as default color when rendering text on your layout. Previously the default layout text color was always white.
  (NOTE: When you specify “Automatic” as text color for your wallpaper then Wallpaper Cycler will still use white as default color for layout text because the text color is calculated after the desktop has been rendered and that color is then used for the icons on your desktop.)
• A “Rename Wallpaper…” option has been added to the menu when you right click a wallpaper in Wallpaper Cycler. This allows you to rename the wallpaper in your list AND on your harddisk. 
  This provides a more complete wallpaper management program without the need to go digging through foders and files looking for files to rename or edit, externally to Wallpaper Cycler.
• Every object in a layout can now have a Link Target. This can be an executable, document, URL, … When you click or double click (configurable) that object on your desktop the Link Target is executed.
  Example of use: put a link to http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/ on your desktop. When you click that text object that site is openend in your default webbrowser. The screenshot below shows an example that uses Link Targets.
  (NOTE: When using URLs as Link Targets for layout objects and you use Internet Explorer and you want the links to open in a new window instead of reusing an existing IE window, in IE go to “Tools > Internet Options > Advanced” and disable “Reuse windows for launching shortcuts”.)

 I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler:

• When one user in Windows XP or later was running WPC and a second user with Fast User Switching would start WPC, the second user would get an “Unable to initialize RPC. The Wallpaper Cycler screen saver will not work.” error. This is now fixed and all users that login to the machine at the same time will have a working screensaver.
• The Calendar Notes Editor didn’t work correctly when opened by double clicking on calendar notes objects on the desktop.
• The random selection algorithm for selecting wallpapers for a wallpaper object set to random in a layout could show often the same image in previous versions of Wallpaper Cycler. In the new version, WPC remembers which wallpapers have already been shown and takes this into account for selecting a random wallpaper for those wallpaper layout objects.
  It works by assigning a flag to each wallpaper. When a wallpaper is chosen, this flag is set to true. So, when you have some smaller wallpaper objects on your layout, WPC will try to select wallpapers that have this flag set to false. When all flags are set to true, WPC will reset the flags to false. In this way, you will have different images most of the time, unless there are not enough images available in the category or when WPC has to reset the flags in the middle of rendering the layout. For example: suppose you have 4 wallpaper objects on your layout. Suppose that after chosing a wallpaper for 2 objects, WPC detects that all flags are set to true. Because of this WPC will reset the flags to false, and then the chance exists that it might select a duplicate image for the 2 other wallpaper objects.

Windows Vista Gadget

I created a small and simple Windows Vista Gadget to control Wallpaper Cycler. This gadget uses the COM .NET DLL explained below. The little gadget allows you to start/stop cycling, go to previous/next wallpaper and toggle slideshow mode on and off. You can see the little gadget on the following screenshot.

COM .NET DLL

I have implemented a small COM .NET DLL which exports some functions that you can use for controlling Wallpaper Cycler. The COM object requires the .NET framework version 2. The following functions are available:

• bool StartCycling()
• bool StopCycling()
• bool NextWallpaper()
• bool PreviousWallpaper()
• bool ToggleSlideshowMode()
• bool ToggleMainWindow()
• int GetNumberOfSecondsTillNextCycle()
• bool IsCycling()

This COM object can be used in any programming language that supports COM. For example, in Javascript it can be used as follows:

<script type="text/javascript"> 
var gWPC = new ActiveXObject("WallpaperCyclerCOM.Controller"); 
var success = gWPC.StartCycling(); 
</script>

The implementation of Search Folders is finished. Search Folders are a powerful tool to create dynamic “categories”. You cannot directly add wallpapers to a search folder. The wallpapers in a search folder are retrieved from all the wallpapers in your wallpaper list that match certain criteria. The following criteria are available:

• Find All Wallpapers: Find all wallpapers in your wallpaper list. All wallpapers will match this condition.
• Find Tags: Only wallpapers with a specific tag or with multiple tags will match this condition. You can specify multiple tags for this condition. A wallpaper will match when it has all these tags. So when you specify multiple tags for this condition you have to interpret it as an AND operator on these tags. If you want to create an OR combination of tags you have to use the boolean OR operator which is explained below.
• Find Text: Find wallpapers with a certain piece of text in their filename or foldername.
• Find Enabled or Disabled Wallpapers: Find wallpapers that are in an enabled or disabled category.
• Find Cycled To (or not) Wallpapers: Find wallpapers that have already been cycled to or that haven’t yet been cycled to.
• Boolean Operator: Boolean combination (And, Or, Not) of several other search commands. Boolean conditions can be nested.

For example, you could create a search folder that will display all landscape wallpapers (= wallpapers with landscape tag) and that have the text “city-trip” somewhere in their name.

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler:

• New “Open Image With…” when right clicking an image in the main window of Wallpaper Cycler. This will open the selected image in a user defined program.
• Find & Replace: This allows you to find part of a wallpaper name and replace it with something else. This feature is especially useful when you’ve moved your wallpapers from for example d:\data\wallpapers to e:\wallpapers. In that case you can Find & Replace all “d:\data\wallpapers” and replace it with “e:\wallpapers”.
• Wallpaper Cycler now has “Global” statistics and “WCL” statistics:
  • “Global” Statistics:
    • The number of times the wallpaper on your desktop has been cycled.
    • The number of times Wallpaper Cycler has cycled the image in the screensaver.
    • The total number of cycles skipped due to CPU load monitoring.
  • “WCL” statistics:
    • 20 Most used wallpapers.
    • 20 Least used wallpapers.
    • Usage of all wallpapers.
• The layout editor now remembers if “Snap to grid” option is enabled or not.
• Objects in a layout can now be locked to prevent moving and resizing.
• In the screensaver you can now press the “left-arrow” key on your keyboard to go back to the previous image. (Note: you can go back only 1 step).
• The calendar object in a layout can now display days with notes with different formatting than other days.
• The calendar object in a layout can now display the header of the current day with different formatting than other header cells.
• You can now change the location of the “NuonSoft WPC Wallpaper.bmp” that is generated by Wallpaper Cycler.
• “Post Cycling Script”: This is a Windows Scripting file for example JScript or VBScript that will be executed after cycling the wallpaper. The one and only parameter to this script is the name of the file to which Wallpaper Cycler has rendered the desktop.
  As an example a “Microsoft Powerdesk Powertool.js” script is installed in the “Post Cycling Scripts” subfolder of the Wallpaper Cycler installation folder. This script makes sure that when Wallpaper Cycler changes the wallpaper that it will be changed on all desktops of the MS Powerdesk Powertool. This example script can also be seen below.

// This WSH file can be used by NuonSoft Wallpaper Cycler as 
// a "Post Cycling Command" to make Wallpaper Cycler compatible 
// with the Microsoft Powerdesk Powertoy (multiple desktops). 
// When this WSH is configured as a Post Cycling Command 
// Wallpaper Cycler will change the wallpaper on all desktops.   

var args = WScript.Arguments; 
var fso = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject"); 
var TemporaryFolder=2; 
var tempfolder = fso.GetSpecialFolder(TemporaryFolder); 
if (args.length != 1) 
{ 
 WScript.Echo("Missing parameter"); 
} 
else 
{ 
 // MS Powerdesk Powertool stores its wallpapers in the temp folder 
 // with MSVDM-DesktopX.bmp as name where X=0...3 
 for (i=0; i<4; i++) 
  fso.CopyFile(args(0), tempfolder + "\" + "MSVDM-Desktop" + i + ".bmp"); 
}

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler:

• Some new calendar templates will be included in the next release of Wallpaper Cycler.
• On a clean installation, Wallpaper Cycler will set “db” as default extension to skip during folder synchronization. “db” is the extension of files used by Windows Explorer for its thumbnail files.
• The screensaver will now remember the name of the layout last used so that layout cycling can continue from there on the next run.
• It is now visually more clear which day is selected in the yellow calendar on the right of the calendar notes editor. The currently selected day is shown in light red as can be seen in the screenshot below.

I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler:

• Deleting wallpapers in the “Finding non-existing images” dialog while the main window is still generating thumbnails for the listview might crash Wallpaper Cycler in certain cases.
• Crash in CalculateDesktopBackColor: this crash often was noticed when you have a few icons on your desktop and you were playing a fullscreen game on a resolution lower than your desktop resolution.
• Sometimes there was a division by 0 when getting a random wallpaper.
• When closing the layout editor, a random layout was selected in the main list instead of the one that was edited.
• Duplicates in feeds-menu when having title + description of a specific feed item on the desktop. Now only one is shown in the feeds-menu.
• Typo in OSD: “Start Cyling” should be “Start Cycling”.
• When a wallpaper object in a layout is outside the screenarea you got an “out of memory” message when using that layout.
• If a timelimit on a parent category enables that parent category, the children categories were not enabled.
• “Move up/down wallpapers” was enabled when “My Wallpapers” was selected, however in the “My Wallpapers” category you cannot change anything.
• On several places there was “SatErday” instead of “SatUrday”.

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler:

• When browsing for a Calendar or Calendar Notes Template, a small preview bitmap is shown in the open dialog.
• The bar on the right of the main window will now change depending on whether a layout or wallpaper is selected.
• Shortcut (Ctrl+Enter) for quickly opening the properties of the selected category or layout category.
• New stretching mode: “Stretch to fill”.
  Depending on monitor resolution/aspect ratio this will stretch to width or to height.
• “Restore and stop cycling” hotkey.

I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler:

• When configuring non-overlapping time limits on all categories, shutting down WPC during 1 time limit, rebooting WPC during another time limit would wrongly disable all categories instead of disabling the category with the old time limit and enabling the category with the new time limit.
  Original description of bug-report:
  I’m having issues with Wallpaper Cycler. I basically have the following lists:
      6am-8am “Dawn”
      8am-12pm “Morning”
      12pm-6pm “Afternoon”
      6pm-8pm “Evening”
      8pm-5am “Night”
  But for some reason EVERY time I start my computer, regardless of the time of day, I get the error that no wallpaper lists are active. I have to open wallpaper cycler, activate all the lists, then manually start the cycle.

• Crash when specifying an outside border for an object and setting that object at position (0,0). 
• Added the name of the layout to the following message that can appear to make it more descriptive:
  “Unable to get wallpaper for wallpaper object with name “Copy of Wallpaper Object 1” in layout with name “layout 1″.”
• Fixed the issue that you got a message like “Unable to get wallpaper for wallpaper object with name “Wallpaper Object 1″.” when using a wallpaper object in a layout and set it to “Random wallpaper from same category” and the category only had 1 wallpaper in it.

Today I started working on a task-based wizard that will be shown when you open the main window of Wallpaper Cycler. Of course you can disable this window with the checkbox in the lower left corner of the window.

This window will show some common tasks. The first task will be “The Basics of Wallpaper Cycler”. This task will explain the concepts of wallpapers, categories and layouts in Wallpaper Cycler and how they all work together. This will just be a brief explanation which you can read in just 1 minute or less. Links will be provided to more detailed information about the different parts.

Two other tasks will be “Add Wallpapers” and “Add New Layout”. These will guide you with a wizard to add new wallpapers respectively add a new layout and will also briefly explain you how to perform these tasks directly from the main window of Wallpaper Cycler instead of using this wizard.

All this should help people that are using Wallpaper Cycler for the first time to get a better understanding of how everything works and to get more out of Wallpaper Cycler.

An initial screenshot of the main window of this task-based wizard can be seen below.

The last couple of days I have been working on fixing Windows Vista related issues in Wallpaper Cycler. Currently most Windows Vista issues have been resolved and the current internal build of Wallpaper Cycler seems to be stable on Windows Vista. Most important issue was that the “BrowserBar” on the right of the main window would often go into an infinite drawing loop. There were also issues with using the Internet Explorer 7 component of Vista in the Manage RSS Feeds dialog of Wallpaper Cycler.

In between, I also have updated the help file some more to reflect all new features that have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler.

However, there is still a lot of work to be done for the next release so I cannot yet put a date on it…

The following new features have been implemented in Wallpaper Cycler:

• Generation of thumbnails is much faster now. Thumbnails are generated between 3 and 4 times faster.
• New “CaptionBar” with details about the selected category or layout category. Right click the CaptionBar to configure what information should be visible in the CaptionBar and what not. An example of the CaptionBar can be seen in the screenshot below:

• Option to expand/collapse all wallpaper/layout categories. 
• Redesigned the properties dialog for wallpaper categories as can be seen in the following screenshot:

I also made the following bug fixes for Wallpaper Cycler:

• Wallpaper Cycler should not crash anymore with hardware DEP enabled.
• Linear gradients didn’t always render properly.
• Rotation for linear gradients didn’t work properly.
• “Time Synchronization Result” balloon contains a more clear message now and only shows 2 digits after the comma.
• “Folder Synchronization Result” balloon contains a more clear message now and you can click it to get the synchronization details.
• Redraw bugs in thumbnail listview when resizing window.