Version 2.0 is a major new release for John's Background Switcher and comprises some large new features and a raft of bug fixes.
New 'Big' Features
317: Be able to choose photos to use from Flickr
You can now run the application in Flickr mode where you can choose the pictures to switch your background with from everyone, a specific user, a photo set or with any tags you like. So for example you could choose 'Everyone' and the tag 'beach' so your desktop will be set with random photos of beaches from every Flickr account. You never know what's coming next! There are plenty of options to narrow down your search such as choosing the most interesting (i.e. popular) pictures, only use landscape-oriented pictures and plenty more besides. The software should be able to automatically connect to Flickr in most cases but you can define your own proxy connection settings if that doesn't happen.
71: Be able to specify a directory to be watched for pictures to switch
You can now click the 'Monitor A Folder' button and the switcher will select random pictures from that folder. You can add pictures to the folder and they'll automatically be included in the mix.
Bug Fixes and Enhancements
337: Remove the option to set the switching interval of seconds
385: The alt-tab icon isn't rightThe minimum switching interval is now one minute, rather than one second. I'm not sure why the interval was so low but for various reasons I thought I'd change it.
386: Make right-click menu act on selected pictures onlyIf you had the settings dialog open and hit Alt-Tab, the icon wouldn't be the correct one for the application. This has now been corrected.
352: Add option to copy crash report to the clipboardIf you select some pictures in the picture list and want to stretch, tile or center them all you can now right-click and do exactly that. Previously the right-click menu would act on all pictures but now it's restricted to those you have selected.
356: Add 'days' to the interval optionsIf you encounter a crash in John's Background Switcher and are unable to upload it automatically to my server, then you can now view the report and copy it to the clipboard. This means you can email it to me, or alternatively have a look at it yourself to satisfy your curiosity!
369: Crash reporting can't send reports back through proxiesYou can now select 'days' as the interval to switch your background. When you select 'day(s)' in the interval drop-down a check box appears called 'Switch at midnight' that when checked means your background will be switched at midnight (or as close as possible to midnight if your computer is off at that time) the specified number of days apart. So if you select an interval of 2 days and check the midnight box, your background will be changed at midnight every 2 days. If you don't check that box, it will change every 2 days from whenever it was last changed.
375: Uninstalling deleted my switcher settings!Crash reports will now pick up the current proxy settings so should work from within a corporate firewall.
379: Create some new tray iconsWhen you uninstall John's Background Switcher you are now asked if you want to delete your personal settings. If you choose 'No' and later re-install, your settings will be remembered.
318: Integrate the downloading and installation of Microsoft.NET with the installerI've changed the colour of the tray icons to be blue rather than green. It turns out that Microsoft ActiveSync also uses a similar green icon so I thought I'd remove the confusion. I thought mine was better than Microsoft's though!
319: Tidy up the background colour selection processJohn's Background Switcher uses Microsoft.NET 1.1 so when you run the installer it will detect if the framework is installed and if not download it from Microsoft and install it too automatically.
336: Change the tray icon when in the process of switching to a busy iconA standard colour selector dialog is now used when you click the button to change the desktop colour.
313: Don't restart switching when the settings are changedWhen the switcher is in the process of changing the background picture the icon in the system tray now changes colour to gray to show that it's busy working.
367: Add option to save current pictureWhen you open the settings dialog and hit OK the settings are no longer restarted. This means that if you're cycling through some pictures the switcher will remember where it was when you add some more. If you want to restart switching when you change the settings, hold down the Shift key when you press OK.
324: Prevent double switches from happeningThere is now an option on the popup menu to save the current picture. If you like the currently selected background (maybe from Flickr!) you can now save it away for later!
322: Clicking 'Previous Picture' doesn't reset the switch timerIt was possible to confuse the switcher by double double-clicking on the tray icon. This is no longer the case.
If the switch interval is one hour and you clicked 'Previous Picture' with 10 seconds to go, then it would change again 10 seconds later. Now when you select a previous picture the timer resets.