I've put a lot of work into version 2.5 to improve the existing functionality, mostly based on suggestions from the people who use it (you). There are numerous new features that expand what you can do with Flickr including 'mosaic' mode (which is my personal favourite). I've also written context sensitive help which details the ever-increasing functionality of my switcher and a new 'More Settings' dialog opens up some advanced options to fine-tune your experience of John's Background Switcher. Enjoy!

New Features

391: Add the option to generate a mosaic image

There is now an option on the settings dialog to generate a mosaic image instead of downloading a single one for your background. In mosaic mode, square thumbnails are downloaded and constructed to produce a pretty impressive picture! It can take around a minute to download and construct these pictures but the results are well worth the wait!

576: Add free text search option to all Flickr modes

You can now choose to enter a search query instead of a list of tags to select photos from Flickr. Anywhere you could search by tags you can now select 'This search text' in the drop-down list and enter a search query.

540: Add option to not show photos with certain tags, like "pants"!

There is now an option called 'Ignore photos with these tags' for Flickr photos. You can specify a list of tags that you don't want to see - so if you really don't want any pictures of children being selected by Flickr, add the tag 'children' to the list!

435: Add option to show interesting photos from the last 7 days

You can now select from interesting Flickr photos from the last 7 days (just like in Flickr's Explore section). Go to choose photos from 'A Period of Time', then select 'Last 7 Days'. About time too!

607: Allow multiple folder monitoring

You can now specify multiple folders to monitor. When switching takes place, a random folder is selected and then a random photo it chosen from that folder (or subfolders if that option is enabled).

630: Add 'wait until idle' switching option

There is now an option on the Advanced section of the 'More Settings' dialog that will only switch when the system has been idle for a period of time. This stops your computer stealing the focus from whatever you're working on - instead it'll wait until you've not touched the computer for 15 seconds.

562: Add option to specify the minimum picture size to choose

You can specify the minimum picture size that will be downloaded or chosen from a folder. This option is in the 'General' section of the 'More Settings' dialog. The default is 640 pixels which should do for most people.

539: Add option to stop checking for updates

There is now an option in the 'More Settings' to stop checking for newer versions of the software. You can still do a check from the tray icon menu however if you turn off checking.

509: Command line options

I've added command line support to John's Background Switcher. If you launch it from the command line with the /? switch then you'll get the list of supported commands. Initially there are:

/next - Selects the next background

/previous - Reverts to the previous background

/refresh - Redraws the current background

/switchto [center|stretch|scale|overscale] "c:\photo.jpg" - Switches the background to the specified photo in the specified mode

It will perform the command and immediately exit. You can now use something like the Windows task scheduler to time background switches if you like!

589: Add 'schedule backgrounds' option

If you want to have specific photos show up at specific times as your desktop background, you can now do it using the command line arguments in John's Background Switcher. You can use the /switchto option combined with the task scheduler in Windows to do exactly this. Consult the documentation 'Command Line Option' page for details (or run John's Background Switcher with the /? command line argument for instructions).

521: Multiple Flickr groups

You can now choose from multiple Flickr groups. Just separate each group with a comma, such as 'cats, blackwhite, interestingness' in group pool mode and your desktop will be selected from a random one of these groups each time.

604: Implement 'add to del.icio.us' option to add the current Flickr photo to your del.icio.us bookmarks

When in Flickr mode you can now add the currently displayed Flickr photo to your del.icio.us bookmarks via the 'Send To' command on the tray menu. http://del.icio.us/ is a site where you and anybody else can store your favourites - it's free and pretty neat!

605: Implement 'send email' functionality to send the current photo to someone via email

When in Flickr mode you can now email someone a link to the currently displayed Flickr photo via the 'Send To' command on the tray menu. This is handy if you see something a photo you like and want to share it with others.

480: Write some documentation and integrate it into the software

You need some help? Well have some help! There is now a help file as part of the install (although you can opt not to select it). Every dialog has a little ? icon in the top-right, click it and you'll go to that dialog's help. You can also hit F1 or select Help from the tray menu.

If I'm doing my job right you shouldn't need it but since there are lots of new features in this version I thought it wise to put some documentation in there.

492: Add an option to stop switching when in remote desktop mode

There is now a new option to stop switching when you're running over terminal services (also known as remote desktop). The default is to stop, but you can change it in the 'More Settings' dialog.

503: Feature Suggestion: Settings Export/Import

You can now import and export your JBS settings which allows you to move your setup from one machine to another. Just go to the 'Import / Export' section of the 'More Settings' dialog and follow the instructions.

511: An ALT+CTRL+ that changes the desktop image wherever in windows you are

You can now select the next background by clicking Ctrl+Alt+N instead of using the tray menu. You can change the shortcut from the 'More Settings' dialog.

590: Integrate a calendar display onto the desktop

There is now an option to draw a calendar on the background. Go to the 'More Settings' dialog and check the 'Draw a calendar on the desktop' option. There are different options on how to display the calendar there.

573: Add an advanced settings dialog to expose all the hidden settings

There is now a 'More Settings' button on the main settings dialog that lets you change the previously hidden program settings (such as whether switching takes place when the screensaver is active or when the application starts).

394: Cache pictures from Flickr to save re-downloading them

There is now an option for Flickr titled 'Use downloaded photos as a cache' that when used in conjunction with 'Save all downloaded photos' can greatly speed up the performance of John's Background Switcher. If it's about to download a photo from Flickr and it's already been downloaded before (and is saved in the 'downloaded folder') then it'll be used as the background instead of it being needlessly re-downloaded.

So if you look at the same group pool or person's photos, it will greatly reduce the amount of bandwidth you're using by only downloading new photos rather than all the ones you've already seen.

202: Auto-rotate images based upon exif information

Photos that contain orientation information are now auto-magically rotated when set as your background image. This cures the problem where portrait pictures could be shown rotated by 90 degrees.

Enhancements / Bug Fixes

647: "The image downloaded from Flickr was invalid. Will try again next time" error

Sometimes you could come across this error when a photo from Flickr is downloaded. This was caused by EXIF information that the .NET framework was unable to read being included in the photo. This problem has now been corrected.

633: Remove installer requirement for Power User or Administrator

You no longer need to be an administrator or power user to install John's Background Switcher. However if you attempt to install to the 'Program Files' directory and don't have write access, the setup will fail.

594: Cache photo lists returned from Flickr to speed things up

Now that the limit of photos you can choose from Flickr has been greatly increased, it makes sense to cache the lists of photos Flickr returns. This will speed up the application (requiring less calls to Flickr) and will cut down on the amount of network traffic which will help both you and Flickr's servers!

617: 'View Current Image' gets confused when switching to list mode

I've re-jigged the picture-list switching mode to deal better with changing modes. Previously it was a bit dodgy when you'd change from Flickr to Picture List mode and do things like select the previous picture and redraw the background. Now it should behave consistently.

618: 'Check for Updates Now' doesn't tell me if there's no update available

If you manually check for updates from the tray menu and a new version isn't available, a balloon tip will inform you that you have the latest one.

622: Tidy up the layout of the settings dialog - it's getting too cluttered

I've attempted to clean up the settings dialog and make it a bit more intuitive by breaking it up into groups. Hopefully it'll make things easier to work out!

606: Add icons to the tray menu to make things more clear

The tray menu now sports shiny new icons for selected options. Aside from looking a bit neater, they'll stop me getting confused about which menu item does what!

559: Untitled pictures appear with "" from Flickr

If a Flickr photo is downloaded with no title, it would be shown as being called "", now the title isn't shown in this case - seemed a bit pointless really!

531: Error Popups

There is now an option in the 'More Settings' dialog to disable all balloon popups. Note that if you do this you won't be able to see any errors that occur, such as if you try to select photos from Flickr and none are available.

526: Set a sensible default file name when saving picture

When you opt to save the current picture, the actual name of the picture is entered into the Save dialog - saves you making one up!

527: Sometimes the switcher stops switching

Apparently the timer I was using in the switcher wasn't 100% reliable and could potentially stop switching for no visible reason. I've rewritten the timer to be more robust and this should no longer happen (although I only had one reported case - that's one too many)!

522: Improve 'Check for updates'

When a new version is available, a balloon tip pops up from the tray icon. You can now click on the balloon tip to go directly to the update page in a browser - saves mucking about launching the settings dialog.

602: Move the web connection settings back into the main setting file

The web connection settings are now stored back in the main settings file - this makes importing and exporting settings easier. If you want to store these settings separately as well (so that you can manually change your proxy settings outside of JBS for example), then select the 'Use an externally modifiable web connection file' option from the 'More Settings' dialog.

599: Refresh the background when you OK the settings dialog

When you OK the settings dialog, the background is refreshed - this means if you change the position of the calendar in the settings it'll be drawn in the new place as soon as you hit OK.

514: Stop polling the file system every 10 seconds

The application checked a status file on the computer every 10 seconds which could result in the hard drive powering up when it needn't. Now the status is cached and only written to disk when it changes.

587: Change the default for Flickr to not only show landscapes

No need for it to default to only showing landscapes - the image resizing means portraits won't be stretched or distorted.

568: Better handling of very large and very small pictures

If you use the 'Center pictures on the screen' option (or 'center' for picture list mode) and the picture being selected as the background is bigger than the screen, it's scaled down to fit. However if it's smaller than the size of the screen, it's simply centred and not resized.

585: Change 'Go to current picture' menu option to read 'View current image'

The menu option launches a browser for a flickr photo or opens the image viewer for a local picture - 'go to current picture' doesn't really explain that so I've changed it to make more sense.

409: The flickr picture limit of 500 is too low

You can now choose from up to 5000 photos from Flickr each time your background is changed in Flickr mode. Just look for the 'Photos to choose' text box!

581: Show how to get to the Flickr photo page for a downloaded picture

A readme file (called JBSReadme.txt) is now saved in the downloaded photos folder to explain how to get to the Flickr photo page from the saved photos. If you see a photo in there you like, you'll want to get to the actual Flickr photo page to see what other photos the person took - you always could but it wasn't very obvious and should be now!

554: Viewing of private photos has broken!

Flickr made a change to their API by adding authentication to a method call that I didn't anticipate. This broke the viewing of private photos and it's now fixed.

569: Crash when attempting connect to the internet

I've made the web connection code more robust so any unexpected problems won't result in a crash, just an error message.

572: Crash when closing down the application

If you were particularly unlucky you could shut your machine down or exit the application while it's in the process of doing something and it would crash. This should no longer be the case.

580: Crash when adding too many pictures at once in picture list mode

If you selected a really large number of pictures to add at once in picture list mode, then when you hit OK on the file selector dialog you'd get a crash. This has now been corrected.

525: Crash when switching in Flickr mode when the temporary picture is locked

It was possible for the temporary picture downloaded from Flickr during switching to be locked by an anti-virus scanner - this crashed the software. No longer!

538: Crash when redrawing the background and failing to calculate the desktop size

Under some strange circumstances the software was unable to calculate the size of the screen - this would cause it to crash rather rashly. This behaviour has now been stamped out!

553: Crash when reading from the net when the connection is forcibly reset

It was possible with very unfortunate timing to crash the application if the net connection failed at a particular point in time - this loophole has now been closed.

563: SecurityException when running as a very restricted user

Bizarrely, if you were running as a user with pretty much no access to the registry at all, you could get a crash caused by the .NET framework trying to work out how Internet Explorer draws hyperlinks! Pretty stupid really, so I've changed how it draws links to make it stop checking.

577: Removing authorisation, then cancelling the settings leaves authorisation removed

This curious and confusing behaviour has now been corrected.

Case 640: Crash after upgrading from an earlier version in folder monitor mode

If you upgraded from an earlier version of John's Background Switcher it was possible to get a crash by running the application in 'Monitor Folders' mode. This has now been corrected.

Case 641: A 'Generic Error In GDI+' error show up for certain images

Thanks to a bug in the underlying .NET Framework, some pictures would fail to display when the 'auto-rotate pictures' advanced option was active. This problem has now been corrected.