Beginner Builder series 75% done! will probably never be finished. :(

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Wallpaperer: Give your wallpaper ADD

So if you're like me, you have a ton of wallpapers that you like to cycle through, maybe once every few weeks, or maybe a month. But why wait so long? Wallpaperer lets you cycle through wallpapers in any amount of time in hours, minutes, or seconds. So here's all the options/features.
  • Start with windows: since you need the process running, it's a good idea to start it with windows. A word of warning, I think there's a problem with this checkbox sometimes, that it wills set the path to "C:\Program Files\WallpapererWallpaperer.exe", and thus will give an error every time, and won't start the program. A simple registry tweak will fix this.
  • Change Wallpaper on start: does what it says. If you want a new wallpaper whenever you start the program, or when you start Windows, if you picked the first option.
  • Choose Wallpaper randomly: choose this if you want Wallpaperer to "shuffle" through your wallpapers. Otherwise, it will just go down the list, the same order every time.
  • Change Wallpaper at specified interval: this to me seems the entire point of the program, but if you want, I guess you could just use this program to change the wallpaper on the startup, then end it. It's your choice, really.
Then there's a box where you can open wallpapers, and a box where you can preview your currently selected wallpaper. I see a few problems with the adding system:
  • No drag and drop: you can't drag and drop files from explorer onto the list. This would be really easy.
  • "Add Files..." is a lie: although "files" is clearly plural, in the "Add Files" dialog that pops up, you can only pick one wallpaper at a time. Combined with the lack of drag and drop, this leaves you with the fact that you can only add 1 file at a time, unless you can crack open the DAT file and copy paste in your wallpapers, like I did.
But other than that, it's a good program. It also has the fact that, as mentioned earlier, there's a preview pane, and you can scroll through your list of wallpapers and double click one if you have the desire for a certain wallpaper. There's also a "Next Wallpaper" button which will either pick the next random wallpaper, or go to the next on the list, depending on how you set the "Change wallpaper randomly" option. The program runs at 3.5mb with window, and 1.8mb in tray, so it's not too resource demanding.

I don't stake my life on this, but I believe that it is portable, since it creates its own INI file, and on the developer's website, you can download just the executable.

Speaking of the developer's site, there are two downloads on the side, one being "Version 1.1" and the other being the "Start with Windows fix". Version 1.1 is an installer, and the fix is just a zip with a wallpaper.exe executable. So if you want to install Wallpaperer, download the installer, install it, then replace the wallpaperer.exe with the fix version. If you want portable, just download the fix, and place it and go. It will create a DAT file containing your wallpapers, and an INI file containing the preferences.

*I did make the icon at the top based on the program's icon, so if you use it somewhere else, please let me know....and give credit where credit is due.

Visit Wallpaperer (Quinnsoft) website for download

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