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DONE - IDEA: change wallpaper at specific time - not timed intervals.

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nudone:
i've checked out quite a few wallpaper managers - most have the ability to change the wallpaper at timed intervals, say, once every hour or so.

how about having a wallpaper manager that changed what was on display at a specific time set by the user?

this way you could set up your morning desktop wallpaper that you like to be greeted with, this could then change at midday (or whatever time you specified) and it could then change again in the evening (and again after that towards dusk).

obviously i'm trying to describe something that mimics the changing pattern of daylight outside your window - you would just have something similar presented to you on your monitor. you know, sunrise, sunset, starry night, etc.

taking things further you could have wallpaper set with different times displayed on it - the wallpaper then changes on the hour every hour (or whatever interval you have set that corresponds to the time prints on you wallpaper set).

if this has already been done elsewhere, please let me know, i've hunted around and can't find this specific feature.

i'm no programmer but i would think this a simple thing to code  :huh:

mouser:
i think this must exist, but if not it's definitely doable as a snack, and i'd be willing to do it, or someone else can.
can someone else find a sample series of nice hires images?

maybe what would be nice is if people who live outside could take a series of 24 hires pics and we could make some "sets" of images.

might be nice to have a screensaver that did similar, ie showed an image based on time of day..  not too hard, probably already exists..

i think both of these two apps probably exist.. we need to find them if so.. if not, they will be implemented this weekend as snacks.

nudone:
that sounds very promising mouser - i'll eat my hat if anyone finds a util that does it already (i have a very small hat just in case).

if this wallpaper manager becomes a reality there is another feature i'd really love to see implemented if possible.

you might have seen/used a program called 'wallpaper drag' that allowed you to drag and resize your wallpaper around on the screen until you were satisfied with how it looked (before finally clicking apply to accept the position and scale of the wallpaper image).

unfortunately the program nolonger seems to be supported - the creators website has gone and there is no way of obtaining an official serial although you can still find the software available to download at http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?500000011102 (this is for version 2).

the other problem is that it doesn't appear to work very well with windows xp - i've had version 3 of the program but it never got on well with xp for some reason and i always had to uninstall it eventually.

if you ever used 'wallpaper drag' you'll understand how much better it was than all the other wallpaper managers - being able to drag the image around on your screen and resize at the same time was an fantastic feature - something i've still not seen implemented elsewhere. i've seen very clumsy methods of resizing and moving the image around on your desktop with other wallpaper managers but they were too annoying to use in my opinion.

as this 'drag and resize' feature doesn't appear to be used anywhere in current software that is available i'd be absolutely over the moon if it could be incorporated into the 'coding snacks wallpaper manager'.

i guess this could be a more ambitious project and beyond the scope of the few hours coding rules - i dearly hope not though.  ;)

mouser:
well i was about to post a link to some freeware wallpaper changers that can change wallpaper at specific intervals, until i realized this is not sufficient.  you really need to be able to tell it to change to a specific image at a specific time, regardless of when started etc.

i think this is worth coding.. im not sure ill get to it this weekend, but i'll comit to doing this, at least in some form.

i was thinking to have it parse a file that could specify what images to show and when.  for example:


--- ---// First the settings (position can be: center, tile, stretch, max)
position=center

// Then the files (file= DATEMASK|TIMEASK|FILENAME, where:
//  DATEMASK is of the form DD/MM/YY-DD/MM/YY
//  TIMEASK is of the form HH
//  and * is allowed
//  and FILENAME is relative path
// if multiple times match due to wildcards, the earliest match will be used.
// if multiple files are specified separated by ; then one will be chosen randomly
// For example
//  */*/2005 - */*/2006 | *-* (the entire year of 2005)
//  */*/* - */*/* | 01-02 (1am to 2 am every day)
//
*/*/* - */*/* | 01-04 | image1.jpg
*/*/* - */*/* | 04-08 | image2.jpg
*/*/* - */*/* | 08-12 | image3.jpg
*/*/* - */*/* | 12-16 | image4.jpg
*/*/* - */*/* | 16-20 | image5.jpg
*/*/* - */*/* | 20-24 | image6.jpg
or


--- ---12/25/* - 12/26/* | 01-24 | christmas.jpg
*/01/* - */10/* | 01-04 | image1.jpg
*/10/* - */20/* | 04-08 | image2.jpg
*/20/* - */32/* | 08-12 | image3.jpg


as for dragging wallpaper position and size.. i'll leave that for another more visual wallpaper tool.

frogblast:
PowerPro http://powerpro.webeddie.com/ can do this. It has a function to change wallpaper, and you can schedule it for an arbitrary time of day. You can also schedule it to repeat at intervals.

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