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John’s Background Switcher 3.3 Released

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John’s Background SwitcherMuch to my own surprise the last version of JBS I released was probably the most stable release I’ve done. This is particularly surprising when I consider the amount of work I put into it and the 100+ cool new features I implemented like the much lauded Snapshot Scrapbook mode.

Put bluntly, despite all the beta testing that was done on 3.2, I expected more crashes! There were, however, a few that cropped up and were worth fixing. So before ploughing onto the big new features for 4.0 I decided to create a release that fixed all the bugs that had cropped up as well as adding a few new features while I had the chance. And so version 3.3 was born.

The new features include:

  • I’ve added support for the new version of Phanfare – the popular photo and video sharing site.
  • I’ve finally sorted out authentication with Flickr. If you authorise JBS with Flickr then previously if you chose from ‘My Photos’ (i.e. your photos) then you’d be able to choose your background from your own private photos, but the authentication wouldn’t work if you chose photos from one of your friends – you wouldn’t see their friend-only photos. Now, if you authenticate JBS with Flickr, then ALL calls to Flickr will be authenticated. So if you’re a member of a private group and choose photos from that group, then you’ll be able to use them for your background. Better late than never eh?
  • Leading on from Flickr authentication, if you choose photos from multiple photo sets – maybe some tagged ‘fish’, some tagged ‘cats’ and some tagged ‘hamster’ – then previously when you switched backgrounds photos would be chosen from ONE of those sets. Now photos are chosen from ALL sets so if you use Snapshot Scrapbook mode then you’ll get pictures of fish, cats and hamsters – rather than all fish, all cats or all hamsters.
  • I’ve added an option to let you run a command after every switch of the background (look in ‘More Settings’ > ‘Switching’). This is handy if you run JBS in a corporate environment and like to have something like BgInfo overlay network information for support purposes.

There are also a bag full of bug fixes. So if you’re using the current version of JBS then you owe it to yourself to download the latest one. You can get it from the usual place. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this is what a Snapshot Scrapbook of photos of fish, cats and hamsters can look like:

A snapshot scrapbook of fish, cats and hamsters

(Source photos: Ci-Ci & PB | Red Fish in a pond | I’m from Mars… | fishy fishy fishy | Solitude | Ohh look down there… | Huh? | It feels so good to be a kitten | _MG_0438 | Octopus).

Note that you can use the ‘Picture Browser’ in JBS to find the originals from any of the montage modes (which is what I did).

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Creator of John's Background Switcher. Scotsman, footballer, photographer, dog owner, risk taker, heart breaker, nice guy. Some of those are lies.

4 Comments Join the Conversation

  1. A hamster background would look so cute! I think I’ll have to change my settings when I get home from mountains :o)

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  2. Thanks John! Normally as soon as I put up a new version I’m sitting watching FogBugz waiting for crash reports to come in and checking my support forum for problems but this time I’ve been rather more chilled, confident that this release corrects a lot more problems that it creates! So far zero crashes. (Cue a string of crash reports…).

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