1. John Conners
   Administrator
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Version 3.4 of John's Background Switcher contains a some bug fixes and several cool new features I thought were worth releasing in the time between 3.3 and 4. The coolest new features are in the 'Montages' section of the 'More Settings' dialog - make that your first port of call and don't say I'm not good to you! The next is Facebook integration, so now you can choose your photos from all of your friends! See also this release announcement including screenshots of some of the best new features.

   New Features

   1275: Add Facebook to the list of photo sources
   FEATURE: You can now choose photos from Facebook! This means you can use pictures from your own Facebook albums, those of your friends and any photos that you're tagged in. All you have to do is follow the instructions in Facebook mode and you'll be up and running in no time.

   395: Add option to use more than one mode at a time
   FEATURE: There is now an option on the 'Advanced' section of the 'More Settings' dialog titled 'Change to a random mode on every switch'. When this is checked then prior to every switch JBS will change to a random valid mode (i.e. it has some photo sets defined). This means you no longer have to open the settings dialog to choose photos from another source.

   1548: Add the option to choose the thumbnail mosaic image size
   FEATURE: There is now an option on the 'Montages' section of the 'More Settings' dialog to change the size of the thumbnail mosaic photo tiles.

   690: Add 'show only portrait photos' option
   FEATURE: You can now choose pictures that are portrait-orientated as well as landscape-orientated (or both of course). There's now a combo box on the 'General' section of the 'More Settings' dialog where you can make this choice.

   1220: Add a button to the 'More Settings' dialog to open the application data folder where the settings live
   FEATURE: There is now a button on the 'Import / Export' section of the 'More Settings' dialog to open the settings folder. This folder contains the settings and status files, the current background image and any log files.

   1773: Add 'Select All' to the 'Pictures' context menu
   FEATURE: You can now right-click the 'Pictures' list and 'Select All' the pictures at once. Saves on mouse clicks!

   1582: If the shift key is held down when double-clicking a photo in the picture browser dialog, copy the location to the clipboard
   FEATURE: In the 'Picture Browser' you can double-click thumbnails to go to the original picture be it on the web or on your computer. If you hold down the Shift key when double-clicking it'll copy the location to the Clipboard instead - useful if you want to use the URL for something else.

   1429: Add a setting to choose the snapshot scrapbook photo size
   FEATURE: You can now change the size of the snapshots in 'Snapshot Scrapbook' mode. This means you can have lots of small pictures or a few larger ones and is pretty cool. The 'Montages' section of the 'More Settings' dialog lets you change this option.

   1567: Add snapshot scrapbook option to not force the photos to be square and cropped
   FEATURE: You can now choose whether to show snapshot scrapbook photos as the previous 'Polaroid' look or the new 'Postcard' look. This option is on the 'Montages' section of the 'More Settings' dialog.

   1547: Add the option to suppress the titles on snapshot scrapbook photos
   FEATURE: You can now suppress the photo captions on snapshot scrapbooks. The option is on the 'Montages' section of the 'Advanced Settings' dialog.

   1540: Add the option to log all popup messages to a file
   FEATURE: There is now an option on the 'Advanced' section of the 'More Settings' dialog called 'Log all popup messages to the Settings folder (see Import / Export)' that will create a log file of every popup message. This is useful if you're getting a lot of annoying messages and want to tell me what they are (so I can help figure out what the problem is).

   You can open the settings folder where the log file is stored from the 'Import / Export' section of the 'More Settings' dialog.

   1577: If you launch JBS while it's already running then show the settings dialog
   FEATURE: If you have JBS running and try to launch it again, you're now prompted if you want to open the settings dialog. This is useful if you don't want to use the tray icon to launch the settings. You can disable the option or make it silently launch the settings by looking on the 'Advanced' section of the 'More Settings' dialog.

   1552: Add an option to show the calendar on all screens (not just the primary one)
   FEATURE: You can now choose to show the calendar on all screens, rather than just the primary one. This option is available on the 'General' section of the 'More Settings' dialog.

   440: Change the windows desktop background color according to a random sampling of the color from the current photo
   FEATURE: You can now let JBS choose the border colour of backgrounds for you. If you click the 'border colour' button on the settings dialog you'll see a menu pops up to let you pick a particular colour or select an automatic colour. The default is now to use an automatic colour and it examines the current picture(s) and chooses a colour that will blend in nicely with that.

   Enhancements / Bug Fixes

   1642: Fix the 'Generic GDI+' error once and for all
   FIXED: The long-standing GDI+ problem has now been fixed! .NET's handling of saving pictures with higher bit rates than standard bitmaps was shoddy at best so I've worked around this weakness.

   1656: Launching JBS on a locked workstation makes JBS think there's only one monitor when there are more
   FIXED: If you started up JBS when your machine was locked (by using a startup script for example) and were running with multiple monitors, then JBS would incorrectly believe that you had only one monitor attached. Only exiting and re-starting JBS would correct this. Now JBS will recount the number of monitors each time it switches the background to prevent this from happening.

   1518: If auto-rotating doesn't work, just use the picture, don't ignore it
   CHANGED: If auto-rotating was enabled (from the 'Advanced' section of the 'More Settings' dialog) in 'Folders' mode and a picture was found with dodgy EXIF data (that's the information in the picture that contains rotation information) then the picture was ignored completely. Now instead the picture is used, just not rotated, which is much more sensible. This was the cause of a lot of pictures never being shown in 'Folders' mode.

   1791: Add shorter retention time to the Flickr download folder cache
   CHANGED: You can now opt to save full-sized downloaded Flickr photos for 1 day, 1 week and 2 weeks in addition to 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and forever. Note that this feature is disabled for montage modes since they are stored in a different cache that you can access via the Picture Browser Dialog from the tray icon menu.

   1780: Show a balloon tooltip to point out where the tray icon that controls JBS is when running for the first time
   CHANGED: When you install JBS and run it for the first time, a balloon tip appears above the tray icon to show you where it is. It's amazing how many people missed it despite it being on the download page. Now there's no excuse!

   1802: Support .tif files (in addition to .tiff files which are already supported)
   FIXED: While .tiff files were supported, .tif files were ignored. This has now been corrected and both are now handled correctly.

   1527: Add the option to choose from your public albums only instead of from all in Phanfare mode
   CHANGED: To match the behaviour of the Phanfare screensaver JBS now only chooses photos from your public Phanfare albums unless you explicitly choose the album from your list. This was causing confusion as the expectation was that when choosing random photos from your collection the private ones would not be shown. Mea culpa!

   1611: Stop caching full sized pictures in folders mode - it's a waste of disk space
   FIXED: If you were using one of the montage options (such as Snapshot Scrapbook) in 'Folders' mode, then the full sized pictures you selected were being cached. This not only quickly filled up disk space but slowed down the switching process in general. Now only quarter-screen versions of the photos are cached making for faster switching and less hard drive wastage.

   1330: Make 'use one picture for the whole desktop' fill all screens when in montage modes (eg. snapshot scrapbook)
   CHANGED: If you 'Use one picture for the whole desktop' and one of the montage modes (like Snapshot Scrapbook) then you'll notice that it didn't fill all your monitors. Now it does - the whole of your 'virtual' desktop space is used to create a giant snapshot scrapbook. Very cool if you have multiple monitors.

   1541: Landscape-only mode is ignored in 'Folders' mode when creating montage backgrounds
   FIXED: If you had selected 'Only use landscape-orientated pictures' from the 'More Settings' dialog and were using one of the montage modes in 'Folders' mode, then portrait pictures would be shown when they shouldn't. This has now been corrected.

   1572: Change the default version of Phanfare to be v2
   CHANGED: Since Phanfare 2 has been around for a while I've changed the default for JBS to use that version (although you can change it in the Phanfare settings to v1 if you're still using the old one). Existing settings are not affected.

   1633: Make sure cancelling works when building up the list of pictures in Folders mode
   FIXED: If you cancelled during switching in Folders mode, then it could take ages to actually cancel - even longer in thumbnail mosaic mode. Now cancelling will have a much quicker effect and actually cancel switching ASAP.

   1636: Only choose non-hidden pictures in 'Folders' mode
   FIXED: Hidden pictures are no longer chosen for selection in 'Folders' mode. Macs leave hidden files around that aren't actually images but could be named as such, so they will now be ignored (as they should be, they're hidden after all).

   1697: Change the 'Show photo info on the photo' checkbox to make more sense
   CHANGED: It now reads 'Show picture info on the top-right corner of the screen', which should make its meaning more obvious.

   1124: In snapshot scrapbook mode, don't use the background image as one of the snapshots
   CHANGED: If you opt to have a background picture in snapshot scrapbook mode (which is the default) it's no longer taken from one of the displayed pictures. This stops the same picture appearing twice. (Better late than never Rosie!).

   1534: Increase the maximum concurrent downloads thread limit
   CHANGED: The maximum number of concurrent download threads JBS uses has now been upped to 10 from 5, although the default is still 4. If you haven't changed this value yourself (which I would recommend against) then don't give it a second thought!

   1666: Prefix popup messages with the current mode for clarity
   CHANGED: When an error occurs during switching the active mode is now added to the title of the resulting popup message. Since there is now the option to pick a random mode it helps to know what mode you're using when a switching problem occurs.

   1673: Using captions from picasa rather than the photo title
   CHANGED: Picasa photo titles now use the caption (if it's set) rather than the name of the file. If there is no caption then it'll use the name as before.

   1557: Create a separate page in the help for each section in the 'More Settings' dialog
   CHANGED: Each section of the 'More Settings' dialog now has its own page in the help file. So when you click the help button and you're on the 'Advanced' section, then that page will show up in the help and so on. Should make finding explanations for options easier to find.

   1556: Crash when storing thumbnail images
   FIXED: There was a small hole whereby JBS could crash when storing thumbnails once they'd been downloaded. This loophole has now been closed.

   1639: Crash when Yahoo! returns invalid XML for a search
   FIXED: Yahoo would, on occasion, return invalidly formatted XML, and JBS didn't like that. Now JBS deals with such problems with aplomb!

   1496: Repeated crashes when invalid text gets set as the switching interval
   FIXED: If some stray text manage to find its way into the interval value in the settings file, it would cause repeated crashes that were quite annoying. This problem has now been corrected.

   1519: Crash when attempting to download an unavailable Smugmug photo
   FIXED: Then a Smugmug photo was not available for download JBS would crash, now it just carries on regardless.

   1480: Crash when cleaning up temporary files and a cyclic redundancy check fails
   FIXED: Whenever JBS cleans up temporary files it culls any files it doesn't expect to be there. If an unexpected error occurred (such as the mysterious CRC failure) then JBS would crash - now it just carries on regardless.

   1535: Crash when cleaning up temporary files and a file is locked by a virus scanner
   FIXED: If JBS was cleaning up some of its temporary files and a virus scanner was misbehaving, then it could crash. This is no longer the case.

   1538: Crash when using Google Picasa Web Albums mode
   FIXED: Google made a breaking change to their public API meaning that JBS could no longer choose photos from Picasa. While they have now fixed their bug I thought it prudent to improve JBS to handle this sort of thing in future.

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