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Automatic Wallpaper Changer Changelog

What's new in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.11.0

May 29, 2012
  • Added the ability to specify a file containing an alpha-channel mask to be applied to the main image when it is displayed over the background.
  • On XP systems the file open dialog is now forced to open in thumbnail mode when selecting graphic file on the Preferences screen (Background, Picture Frame etc.).
  • Added Photoshop (.psd) files to the list of files that can be used as a picture frame. Previously only .png and .gif.
  • Bug fix - Start button would sometimes show the word Start instead of Restart even though the timer was running.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.10.33 (Feb 17, 2012)

  • The way the AWC wallpaper is constructed and displayed on screen has been changed so that it should now display on multimonitor systems correctly irrespective of how they are laid out. Note that this can mean that opening the underlying bitmap in an editor might mean that you do not see what you expect. I only have access to systems with two monitors so reports of any problems on systems with more than that will be appreciated.
  • Screensaver functionality changed to match the new way of handling multimonitor systems.
  • On Windows 7 systems you can now set the OS Logon Screen background to be the wallpaper that is currently displayed on your desktop. Note that on multimonitor systems it is the wallpaper on your primary monitor that is used.
  • Restart button caption now changes between Start/Restart depending on current status
  • Bug fix - New method of displaying wallpaper broke screensaver

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.10.14 (Jan 10, 2012)

  • Fixed bug where wallpaper does not change if all windows are minimised and no desktop icons highlighted because AWC thought that a full screen program was running in the foreground
  • Added sort direction indicators to file view column headers
  • Added view mode indicator icons to make it easier to see what mode you are in
  • Folder/Files list column headers use slightly larger font
  • Minor changes to some button labels and their tooltips so they change depending on what view mode you are in
  • Bug fixes to prevent crashes when some menu items were selected before AWC had loaded any files

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.10.0 (Dec 21, 2011)

  • Added the ability to drag and drop one or more folders onto the file list in View By File mode. All image files in each dropped folder are added to the list. Recursion of subfolders is not supported.
  • Updated program icon so it resizes with high definition on Windows 7.
  • When graphical items are selected in preferences their contents are now displayed as a thumbnail on the page.
  • General Program Options page has been split into four separate tabs as it was getting very cluttered.
  • You can now take a snapshot of the current set of screens' wallpapers and have that snapshot displayed when the wallpaper is cleared.
  • Standard Filtering (Folder View Only) in Preferences has been split into three separate tabs to make room for additional option.
  • Exclude Folders option has been added to Standard Filtering. You can define one or more folders that should not be searched for files when refreshing the file list.
  • Added the option to apply a texture to the final wallpaper. This is somewhat experimental but works well depending on the kind of images you are using.
  • Fixed bug where user adding a new display to the system without restarting Windows would cause AWC to show an error message on each change.
  • Added option to delete the list of recently used themes.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.9.26 (Nov 2, 2011)

  • Fixed problems with graphical picture frames not being transparent
  • Added Balanced Smart option to transparency options. This adjusts the edge which is treated as transparent depending on how resizing has made the image fit on the screen
  • Background image for each monitor is now stored in memory ready for reuse instead of rereading from disk each time
  • /EXCLUDE command line option added. This allows you to specify the name of a text file which contains a list of folders that should not be read when looking for files. I'll add this functionality to the preferences page at a later date.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.9.1 (Dec 21, 2010)

  • New option to display the comment that you've added to a file on the screen
  • You can now edit the file comments in either file or folder mode.
  • Added the ability to use EXIF geotag information stored in the image to open Google Earth at the location the picture was taken. This was inspired by the way the iPhone stores latitude and longitude when you take a picture.
  • New option that allows you to simply open the folder containing the image file in Windows Explorer when you opt to edit a file.
  • Fix to problem where, when tiling pictures, AWC could enter a locked state and show very high CPU usage.
  • Initial fix for Windows 7 problem where multiple monitor systems only displayed properly if the monitors were physically laid out as Monitor1, Monitor2 etc. If Monitor2 was to the left of Monitor1 the image layout was wrong. The problem is due to Microsoft changing the way the desktop is displayed in order to support its own, very limited, Wallpaper changer, so virtual screen positioning is ignored. This is still not a complete fix as the monitors must be laid out next to each other (in any order), they cannot be one above the other yet. I'm still working on that.
  • The speed with which meta-data can be extracted from files when using advanced searching options has been greatly improved.
  • The preferences page previously called File name has been renamed Caption.
  • You can now select to display different items as a caption on the image: file name, file comment and original image date.
  • Moved the option that defines whether to use the created or modified date of the file to the General preferences page.
  • Added a new page to the Preferences screen to allow the user to manage which file extensions should be treated as image files. Along with the previously supported file formats I've added a number of others: TIF, PSD (photoshop), and Camera RAW.
  • Camera RAW formats for a large number of camera manufacturers now loadable. Go to the new Extensions page of the Preferences screen and tick the formats you want to load. Note that the appalling lack of standardisation for RAW formats, even from the same manufacturer, means that some files work but others of ostensibly the same format don't. In particular EXIF metadata retrieval can be a bit hit or miss.
  • AWC can now be set to pause the change process if there is an application running full screen: typically video players or games.
  • Fix to an issue where a corrupt image file could be loaded without detection and then lock up AWC when it tried to display it. My thanks to Moverickslayer for pinning down the culprit and for all his feedback from beta-testing the new version.
  • Fixed small issue where loading a new theme, in which the image position was different from the current one, resulted in the current wallpaper being redisplayed in the new position before the new theme loaded.
  • If an image is redisplayed after editing the timer is now reset to full duration so you get enough time to enjoy the changed image.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.8.17 (Dec 21, 2010)

  • More load time theme fixes
  • Added ability to delete displayed file using hot-keys. Only the first two monitors are supported for this.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.8.5 (Sep 3, 2010)

  • Fixed bug in function to load a recent theme where the theme was a File View based one. Selecting the theme from the list of recently used themes resulted in an error saying that there were no files selected for display sand the saved list of files was not reloaded.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.8.2 (Aug 26, 2010)

  • The Preferences screen has been completely redesigned. It's intended to be less cluttered, more user friendly and allow more explanatory text to be displayed
  • New setting that allows wireless network connections time to reconnect after returning from standby
  • Minor tweaks to support the Windows 7 interface changes
  • You can now filter on the the text contained in image comments for JPEG, GIF and PNG files
  • Added a means of editing image file comments
  • Enhanced Theme management
  • Function of Save button changed so that it still saves the current preferences as the default if no theme is currently selected but saves any changes to a loaded theme to the theme itself NOT as the default.
  • The Save settings on exit option has change to Save settings on exit or when loading a new theme.
  • Currently selected theme is displayed in status bar.
  • Theme menu is available by right-clicking on the theme name in the status bar.
  • Users can assign their own hotkeys to various AWC functions
  • No hidden files option added
  • In File view I've added an option on the list's pop-up menu to jump to the position in the list of the currently displayed file

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.7.54 (Mar 11, 2010)

  • Issued new installation set as the wrong version of a component was included in the previous one. This meant that EXIF rotation broke.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.7.50 (Feb 27, 2010)

  • Filter by image dimensions added
  • Filter by orientation added (e.g. portrait only)
  • Ampersands in file names now display correctly
  • Window focus issues when using tray icon fixed
  • Main window is no longer hidden by default when minimised in Windows 7 so it complies with interface standard. Option added to preferences so that this behaviour can be forced.
  • Task bar icon handling now Windows 7 compliant
  • In File View AWC no longer displays a file not found image when asked to display files that have been deleted from the disk but are still in the file list
  • In file view corrected logic when deleting a file in multimonitor mode so that the next file in the list in displayed rather than the first one.
  • You can now select Do not show me this message again option on some informational messages. Select Reset Hidden Prompt Message from View menu to turn them back on.
  • Updated to FreeImage version 3.1.31 so that recent modifications to EXIF standard are supported
  • JPG decoding enhanced for greater clarity
  • You can cancel the filtering process by pressing key
  • Fixed bug where dragging a shared folder from a remote computer did not add the folder to the list
  • When deleting a file in folder mode AWC now selects a random file to replace it rather than always selecting the last file in the list
  • Now accepts a theme (.SET) file as a command line argument. This means you can just drag and drop a theme onto your AWC shortcut or set up a simple file association.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.7.20 (Dec 9, 2009)

  • Fixed bug in tiling algorithm on multi-monitor systems so that only the image that needs to be tiled is tiled as opposed to all images as was happening before
  • When a new version of AWC is available AWC will now now download the latest version of its installation program directly instead of just opening the download page. This should prevent confusion when people download what should be the latest version from Download.com but the site hasn't caught up yet.
  • Trying to launch a second instance of AWC now simply opens the running instance instead of generating an error message.
  • Restored old taskbar position handling and made it an option to resize so that the image does not partly lie underneath
  • Worst fit mode now takes account of position setting

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.7.0 (Nov 8, 2009)

  • Removed comdlg32.ocx component because it caused problems on some systems
  • All file save and file open dialogs now use use native API calls and should therefore reflect the style of the operating system better
  • Image sizing and positioning now takes account of the task bar
  • When restarting or otherwise doing a potentially long file search, the status bar now shows progress so that the system doesn't look frozen
  • Added a graphical picture frame option
  • Pictures containing Alpha channels or other transparency (PNG and GIF) are now rendered properly
  • In view by file mode I've added a file info box
  • If the setting to automatically check for new version at startup is on, no error message is displayed if there is not currently a connection to the internet
  • Added an input box to enable the user to manually enter a UNC path. Hold key when clicking Add button
  • Status bar shows file processing info during change process.
  • Rotate desktop hotkey added ++
  • Rewrote splash screen to be quicker and more compact
  • Rewrote date/time retrieval for files in the View by file list so it should fill quicker

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.6.21 (Aug 15, 2009)

  • Added view by file mode so users can select individual files and display them in different sort orders
  • Background image can now be stretched to fill the screen as well as tiled
  • Tweaked some menus so single monitor systems don't need to access submenus for delete and edit etc.
  • Fixed up-down button bug that had the buttons work the wrong way round on some Vista systems
  • Added quick start guide for new users
  • Restyled main screen to make access to features more obvious and eas

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.5.35 (Jun 28, 2009)

  • Save your current settings and image folders to a file as a Theme. This lets you create image themes which can be quickly loaded later
  • You can now put a frame around the displayed image
  • Swap images around on multi-monitor displays (Edit/Rotate)
  • Tray icon text now shows full path info to displayed files with ellipsis if too long to fit
  • New users are prompted for the image directory to use at start-up
  • Default settings set to what is most commonly required

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.4.39 (Jun 28, 2009)

  • Alpha blended fade effects added
  • When no background image is used the wallpaper is displayed using desktop background colour rather than black
  • Enforce maximum stretch when resizing small files
  • Added more options to position the filename on screen
  • Added opacity setting to filename display
  • Program icon code updated to support Vista large icons
  • Added hot key to open preferences screen - CTL+ALT+F2
  • Command line settings added to support latest functionality
  • New tab added to preferences as Image Processing tab had no more room
  • Screen Saver added.

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 4.3.41 (Mar 4, 2009)

  • Multiple monitor support added
  • All attached monitors display the wallpaper sized appropriately to the individual monitor's resolution etc.
  • Option to display a different image on each monitor.
  • User can select an image to tile over the whole monitor background before painting the wallpaper on top of it
  • Check and prompt message in registration process to ensure the user has admin rights
  • Add directory dialogue made resizable

New in Automatic Wallpaper Changer 3.0.7 (Nov 27, 2008)

  • Bug fixes this time in logging functionality, logic for enabling save button after changing preferences and Splash screen updated to display logo correctly irrespective of font size settings.
  • Beefed up logging functionality.
  • Added MINFILESIZE command line option. Will add to preferences screen sometime in the future.
  • Fixed left most screen positioning in tiled mode to use 0 instead of 1. Issue was hold over from when AWC was originally written and did not support tiling.