Wallpaper board

[Little John]

Hi Michael,

because of your program and its nice looking results, in the meantime I became very interested in programming something like that myself.
I don't have much experience with graphics programming, and I think this will be fun, and will be good for improving my skills in this field.

Thanks, Little John

[Michael Vogel]

because of your program and its nice looking results,

... in the meantime I became very interested in programming something like that myself.
I don't have much experience with graphics programming, and I think this will be fun, and will be good for improving my skills in this field.

Great - if you have to deal with problems, I may be able to help. On the other hand you may solve some issues I still fight with (e.g. font quality)

[Little John]

Michael, thanks a lot for your kind offer!

Regards, Little John

[Little John]

Great - if you have to deal with problems, I may be able to help. On the other hand you may solve some issues I still fight with (e.g. font quality)

Currently, the output of my program looks e.g. like this:



So far, I'm satisfied.

But how do you do picture rotation in such a good quality? Are you using procedures that are publicly available (on this forum or elsewhere)?
Font quality seems OK for me so far. But that might be because of my old eyes with bad visual acuity.

Best regads, Little John

[Michael Vogel]

But how do you do picture rotation in such a good quality? Are you using procedures that are publicly available (on this forum or elsewhere)?
Font quality seems OK for me so far. But that might be because of my old eyes with bad visual acuity.

Best regads, Little John

Your wallpaper looks good for me as well

I was also searching within the forum and found some great code from Louis for doing a smooth image rotation. I did some tiny changes for me, but the code base can be found here. It is a brilliant work, even it is not the quickest routine in the world (nessun'optimized it for now)

[Little John]

Your wallpaper looks good for me as well

Thanks.

I was also searching within the forum and found some great code from Louis for doing a smooth image rotation.

I also used Luis' code, but it did not anti-alias the image border. In the meantime, Luis has explained to me the reason why, and I fixed that issue myself. Graphics programming is a world of its own.

Regards, Little John

[Little John]

Hi Michael,

how does your program tell Windows to display the newly created wallpaper?

In my program, I tried several ways, e.g. after this code by Sparkie, or using

Code: Select all

SystemParametersInfo_(#SPI_SETDESKWALLPAPER, 0, wallpaperFile$, #SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE)

All my attempts work fine when I start my program manually. However, when I compile the program and put a link to it into the Windows "Autostart" group, my program does never automatically change the desktop wallpaper on Windows startup (Windows XP SP3 32 bit).
When I put a link to your program into the Windows "Autostart" group, it does work as expected. Tell me your secret, please.

Regards, Little John

[blueznl]

Have a peek at the source code of WallX. I've tried different ways, and ran into some issues with Windows 7 and Windows Vista, which I've documented as well.

[Michael Vogel]

I'm on holiday and internet access is not possible most of the time: so just a quick reply, choose a target path for you wallpaper you'll have access guaranteed, like the temp directory.

[Little John]

Have a peek at the source code of WallX.

Thanks for the hint. I've replied in detail in the WallX thread.

choose a target path for you wallpaper you'll have access guaranteed, like the temp directory.

I did do so, the cause of the problem must be something else.

Thanks, Little John

[Little John]

I solved the "mystery" now. I had completely forgotten that Dexpot (a free utility for virtual desktops) is running on my PC.
On Windows startup, in rare cases my wallpaper program was launched after Dexpot and everything was fine. But in most cases, on Windows startup at first my wallpaper program was launched, and it changed the desktop wallpaper as it should. But then Dexpot was launched, and it changed the desktop wallpaper again, according to its own settings.
The solution simply was to change the Dexpot settings, so that it also uses the bitmap file created by my program as desktop wallpaper. Maybe this report helps someone else to avoid a similar issue.

Regards, Little John