Version 2.6.3.6 Released

Version 2.6.3.6 Changes(3/10/2008)
- ADDED an option to fill the center-tiling offset spaces by stretching the image a bit... but as I thought... without a good resizing filter, the images look like crap... Well... some images are ok looking, without any noticeable jaggedness, but most do... I'll leave this option here in case I get a better resizing filter later on.
- ADDED code to really scale small images. Somehow... that bit of code was missing?... probably I never really thought about it much and didn't write it so now I have written it. ^-^
- ADDED code clause to make the image be stretched if the image size ratio is equal or similar to the screen aspect ratio.
- CHANGED the checkbox sizes since it would not show all of it when the program was running, even though in the resource editor it would show all of it.
- CHANGED Screen Ratio Calculation. It now actually calculates the screen ratio given screen width and screen height. Before, I hadn't had the need to do it since I was using a 4:3 screen ratio... and then some files were at 5:4 screen ratio so I thought that was all... until I got my new laptop... 16:10... -_- Oh well... now it calculates the ratio and now it seems that the centering calculation got fixed by this. ^-^
- CHANGED the default location pick chance from 0 to 100. Now, it's set to 100% by default. ^-^
- CHANGED the GetRandomNumber a bit... just made it return 0 if the MaxLimit number was less than 0.
- FIXED Incorrect Tiling offset code. The original idea was that if Windows considered the image to be fit for tiling across the screen, then my app would see if it could tile it a bit better in a neat way, but there are some images that my app would tile, but Windows would not consider them to be fit for tiling, thus my app would not calculate the offset right, which ended up not including the offset when center-tiling some images. Now, that's fixed. All I did really, was to remove the dependency check for whether Windows wants to tile the image or not. So now it doesn't matter whether Windows wants to tile the image or not, my app will calculate whether it is fit for tiling by itself. lol~ ^-^
- FIXED Previous List code. It was giving me errors at times when the list was full, so I fixed it... hopefully it works alright now. ^-^

Any suggestions?

Hmmm... it's been a while since I've updated this program... well... not really. -d-;; I've already made 4 changes to it... but they're changes and not additions to it. It's my personal policy to make a release once either I manage to do 10 changes/fixes or I have at least made 1 addition + some changes/fixes to the program... so right now I'm waiting to add something to it... but I don't know what to add? @o@ ... I guess I've got no choice but to add functionality to get images from flickr and stuff... been trying to avoid doing it since it looks too complicated to do... not that I've looked into it... *sigh*... at this rate... who knows when I'll feel like looking up info to add that functionality... in the mean time... I wonder if there is nothing else (something simple? =P) to add... *sigh*

Version 2.5.1.3 Released

Version 2.5.1.3 Changes(9/21/2007)
- ADDED Disable Error Messages flag. Actually, it would be more like disable any and all messages altogether except for init errors... It came as a request through the feature request tracker in Sourceforge. *^~^* iya~~~ to think that somebody would ask for a feature for my little program~~~ I'm so happy~~ ^-^. Anyways, the person who requested it needed for the
program to fail "silently". Could have always used the MessageBox class (Show Debug Info = On) since that message box is modeless, oh well. Now, it doesn't run AfxMessageBox for errors that need to be shown but Show Debug Info is off. The only exception for this is the code that is run in InitDialog and the constructor of the main app. Since that code is not run more than once... I didn't make it hide the message boxes. Well, enjoy~ ^-^ and hope it works well. (It's not as if there are errors all the time, so there's a limit to how well I can test it...)
- FIXED count images code. It was trying to show the MessageBox's OK button when there was no message box in view. Must have happened when I was using search/replace to add the bLogDebugInfo into the program. Oh well, it's fixed now. ^-^
- UPDATED the lodePNG library. The author of it got into contact with me! I was so~ amazed. lol. I want my program to be better, and he wants his library to be better. ^-^ We are currently trying to figure out why it crashes with Optimizations enabled. In the mean time, he uploaded a newer version of the library so I went to get it. It does things faster than before. ^-^
- FIXED Manual Location bug. If there was an error (no valid images in location), even if the m_bPlaceStick flag was off, the thing would stick, so I moved the resetting code a scope upwards and now it works. ^-^

Version 2.4.2.6 Released

Version 2.4.2.6 Changes(6/1/2007)
- ADDED code to just log debug info into file instead of displaying it and letting the user save it. You can still do that, but you can also have it to just log it automatically. If you turn this option on, it'll save it in"Background.log" file in the same directory as the executable. If you leave it on for hours on end... the file may get too big... lol =P. I left it on for about a whole day and it came to be about 1.2MBs in size... hmmm... not bad. ^-^
- ADDED a dialog box to be able to select the SplashScreenImage/TrayIcon set to either one of the ones that it picks, or to do it randomly... as it has been doing till now. Don't know... just had the idea of adding it... -o-;;
- CHANGED code to recognize Vista when figuring out Windows version.
- CHANGED the size of the Message Box. Made it longer so that I could see more of the info displayed in 1 pass. I wanted to make it resizable... but when I looked in google about it... it was too complicated/too lazy to do so....
- CHANGED the Open Dialog code for Manually Change Image so that it'll select "All Files(*.*)" by default
- CHANGED some stuff in the PNG library code... mainly I added 58 typecasts. Geez... what a pain... I did it in the hopes of making it work in the Release version, but to no avail... still don't know what's wrong with it. B_B
- CHANGED Release options to disable Optimizations when compiling. That's what was giving me the errors on Release mode and not on Debug mode.
- CHANGED PNG code so that instead of displaying checkered boxes for transparency, it would display it as transparent? well, it seems the background color in Vista is black so..... don't know how to change it, but this comes out nicely with this. It appears in black so. ^-^

It seems...

as if I'm not the only one interested in this program. lol. I just looked through the statistics page and I had it show me the All-Time statistics, and it seems it's been downloaded many times. The thing is kinda even... like there are downloads for a couple of months, and then there aren't any for like 2~3 months and then for like 3~4months there are downloads... like that... and I thought that it was only me and Erick who knew about this little program of mine. lol Well, it feels good to know that other people have downloaded my program... and I really hope they like it. ^-^

Figured it out!

I figured out why the Release version wasn't working as expected. It seems that I have to turn off Optimizations for it to work. Geez... so now my Release version will be a bit bigger in size... -_- I'm lucky to have figured it out, I guess... I'll have to look into the lodePNG library code to see what's "incompatible" with Optimization. Oh well, at least I know why.

2.3.3.3 Fix?

OK, the PNG code crashes when running the Release version of the program, but it works perfectly fine with the Debug version. @_@ Don't know what's going on, but until I figure it out, I uploaded the Debug version so use that one... oh, and the Debug version contains a few changes that are not in the changelog. I'll write about it in the next release. ^-^

Background 2.3.3.3 Release!

Version 2.3.3.3 Changes(5/23/2007)
- ADDED PNG File support. I found lodePNG library while looking for a way to add PNG support. It's nice and small. Right now loading and displaying of PNG files is slow, but works. It gave me a bit of trouble, perhaps it's just me getting back to programming and stuff... It's done and although it may not work fully, it works somewhat... at least with the files that I have.
One thing about it is that CPicture::SaveAsBitmap() can't save the PNG files. I left it as that since SaveBitmapFile() is outside of the CPicture class and the only way for me to save the PNG file is through SaveBitmapFile(), so I decided to implement the saving of PNG files to BMP in the main program app.
- ADDED reset control code. Now when you press Cancel, it truly works like it. When you press Cancel, it resets all controls. Before, it would just hide the dialog box, nothing else. Now it resets controls so as to not confuse people that some settings are on or off.
- ADDED code to set wallpaper with ActiveDesktop enabled. When setting the wallpaper, if ActiveDesktop is enabled, it'll use the IActiveDesktop::SetWallpaper() to set it, otherwise, it'll use the good-old SystemParametersInfo(). Note, this thing is untested since I don't have a
Windows OS with ActiveDesktop (I'm using Vista right now).
- CHANGED code so that the tray icon would change with the AboutBox/Splash images. I had it load only the 1st icon... and I guess I forgot to change it while thinking I had. lol. Now it's fixed. ^-^ Also, when you disable splash screen, then it'll only use the 1st icon (Ruri icon).
- CHANGED automatic starting with windows code. I was using GetCurrentDirectory() but I changed that to GetModuleFileName() since the previous function wasn't working well. It would fail whenever I set the option AFTER it changed the background once.
- CHANGED the way for the dialogs to pass data back and forth. I'm now using a struct of pointers to pass to the property pages. Makes the code look... nicer?

Trashed the super debug logging mode idea... takes too much useless space.
Trashed the moving of dialog code to DLL idea... didn't seem necessary.

VIEW TECHNICAL TALK SECTION FOR SOME IMPORTANT INFO!

New site

... there is just one thing that really stands out in here... It made a big impression on me when I first saw it... the site is sooo ... narrow.... @_@

Moved Site

I'm now back from them army... done with it and trying to get back into things. I moved the website from sourceforge site to here in blogger since I'm already using 2 blogs and since the only thing I really needed was a way of adding updates... I decided to use a blog instead of making my own site for it. I guess you could call me lazy for that... I WAS going to make a PHP site for it... but somehow... it just seems to... troublesome and I think I'd spend more time into making the site and maintaining rather than updating the program. Oh well. I hope it all goes well. ^-^ I'm slowly getting back into things and should get started. I want to move the dialog code to a DLL library since the code directory right now is a jungle... @_@ Don't know how I managed to make it like this... I'll pretty much spend time in splicing code here and there, moving it here and there... *sigh* When I see that I have a lot of work to do ahead of me... I feel like not doing it... but that's human nature. Time to get started. Forward, GO!~ (Anxiously waiting for Manabi Ep 10 +_+)