The main highlight for 2.4 is the addition of the ability to choose from your own private photos. There are more bug fixes than you can shake a stick at and there are numerous other bits and pieces that most people won't notice (hell, I don't even notice)!
New Features
424: Add authorization to show your own private photos
There is now an option in 'User Flickr' mode to use 'My Flickr Photos'. This will allow you to show photos from your own Flickr site including private ones. To get it to work, click the 'Authorise' button which will launch an authorisation dialog. Follow the instructions to give John's Background Switcher read access to your photos which will allow it to select from all your photos (including private ones). Note that this will only allow your install of John's Background Switcher to see your private photos, not everybody that uses it!
518: Prevent small images being chosen as backgrounds in 'Monitor' mode
When in 'Monitor A Folder' mode if a small picture was selected, say a 16x16 one, it looked a bit ridiculous being set as the background. Now, if the maximum width / height is less than 640 pixels it won't be considered for switching.
507: Stop checking for updates so frequently!
Instead of checking for newer versions every time you start the application and every 24 hours thereafter, the software will now check every 4 days - it seems a bit more sensible. You can always click 'Check for Updates Now' from the tray icon to force a check any time you like.
491: Make 'scale' the default mode when adding new pictures in picture list mode
When you add a new picture in 'Picture List' mode it will default to being shown in 'scale' mode. This made more sense than 'stretch' which more often than not would distort the proportions of the picture.
493: Refresh the background when the application starts
If you used a laptop with multiple monitors and rebooted it without the second monitor attached, the background would be drawn incorrectly - now when the application starts the first thing it does is refresh the background to make sure all is well.
433: Refresh the background when the screen resolution changes
If you changed your screen resolution, or move one of your monitor locations around in the Windows display settings dialog, the wallpaper would appear to be tiled incorrectly. This has now been corrected so the background will be redrawn once the display settings are changed (well, within a few seconds anyway).
460: Only bother switching when the screensaver isn't active
The background will now only be changed when the screen saver isn't active. It was a bit pointless changing the background if you're not able to see it!
470: Add 'scale picture and fill screen' option to resize pictures
There is a new resizing mode for pictures: 'Scale pictures to FULL screen' (or 'over-scale' in 'Select Pictures' mode). This re-sizes the picture to fill the entire screen (or screens) while maintaining the correct proportions of the picture. If the scaled picture is larger than the screen then the edges will be trimmed off. If you want to always see the whole of the picture then 'Scale pictures to fit the screen' (or 'scale' in 'Select Pictures' mode) is the one for you!
477: Write text on image AFTER resize
If you enable 'Show photo info on the photo' in Flickr mode then the title and owner of the photo are drawn in the top-right corner of the screen. Previously the size would vary depending on the size of the photo but now they are always drawn at the same size and at the top-right of each screen in a multiple monitor setup.
Bug Fixes
468: Crash when monitoring a folder on a network drive that's disconnected
If you used the application in 'Monitor A Folder' mode and pointed it at a network path, then removed it, you could get a crash. This is no longer the case.
483: Crash when downloading a Flickr photo from the internet
A network configuration error could case the software to crash when downloading a photo from Flickr. This will no longer cause the crash and will alert you to the error instead.
499: Crash when clicking the 'Go to the Background Switcher homepage' link
If a default browser isn't available and you clicked the 'Go to...' link on the settings dialog, you could get a crash. Now you get a friendly message box instead!
501: Crash when switching backgrounds in file or folder mode
If you had a picture that was of a format unsupported by the .NET framework (there's the odd JPG out there that this happens with) and it was chosen in 'Picture List' or 'Monitor A Folder' mode then the application would crash. Now it won't, it'll just tell you which one the offending picture is.
502: Crash when a virus scanner has locked the connection settings file
John's Background Switcher maintains the web connection settings file separately to the main settings (so that you can manually change them outside of the software). If this file became exclusively locked (by a virus scanner for example) when Flickr is being contacted, then the application would crash. I've fixed this and instead display a balloon message in the system tray. This means you can continue and the next time it contacts Flickr everything will be fine (unless the file is locked again). I've only had a couple of reports of this problem come in so I'm going to assume that it only happens intermittently and this solution should do the trick.
505: Crash when refreshing the background
It was possible to crash the software when refreshing the background when you hadn't first done any switching. This has now been fixed and my wrist has been slapped for not checking if there was a background already there!
481: The tray icon sometimes looks boxy in lower resolution mode on Windows 2000
Operating systems below Windows XP (e.g. Windows 98 and 2000) wouldn't render the tray icons correctly - this has now been corrected.
519: Put the version number in the settings dialog title bar
As requested, the version of the software now appears in the title bar of the settings dialog.