Showroom

Windows doesn’t force you to change any of the default options, even if referring to aesthetics. However, it does provide a decent amount of ways to make the desktop suit your style, starting with the background picture. Moreover, you can use third-party application like Showroom for even more customization options.

Before you go on installing the application, make sure .NET Framework is on the computer you want to use it on. However, if you’re running newer iterations of Windows, there’s a high chance it’s already there, because it comes as a default feature, thus skipping you the effort and time needed to deploy it.

What Showroom does is attempt to enhance the capabilities of Windows to change your desktop background picture, just in case you find the default methods tricky, or lacking depth. However, a few seconds in and you realize it not quite what you expected to find.

The main window is structure in several tabs, such as the wallpaper controls, cycle options, and log. The first is where you’re initially brought, and needs to be manage so that the application knows what picture to set as your wallpaper, and how. You can’t drag pictures over the main window, but you can load JPG, BMP, PNG, and GIF files through the built-in browse dialog.

Applying style is selected from a drop-down menu, with common elements like tile, stretch, and centered. Switching to the cycle options tab, you get to set how often the wallpaper should change, and also choose a picture folder. Moreover, you can make the application cycle colors instead of picture.

However, cycle options are not quite polished, with a couple of drop-down menus for time, with values starting from zero, but this doesn’t make your wallpaper chance as an animation. There’s also a log tab, which is merely a text field where you can add customized scripts, but there’s little info provided in this regard, and no samples.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that Showroom is not quite the change or improvement you’re hoping to find, and even Windows default features manage to make a better impression. There’s nothing in particular that makes the application stand out from the crowd, with common features that are poorly implemented in a compact interface.