News archive
JPEG Saver 4.20
As I said when I released the 64-bit TrayBlank 1.9.1, I really wanted to release a 64-bit version of JPEG Saver. So here it is, along with the 32-bit version and both of them packaged up in .msi installer files created using the WiX toolset.
I suggest uninstalling the previous version before installing this one. It won't actually break anything if you don't, but you'll be left with the uninstaller from the earlier version hanging around on your machine.
As for actual changes in this version, there isn't much. I've made the style editor dialog resizeable so you can actually see the text preview when you are using really big fonts, and I've updated the list of built-in presets to include filters for files created in 2017 and 2018. To help use that, I've added another button to the filters dialog to reset the presets to the defaults list (otherwise JPEG Saver uses the list saved with the config file).
TrayBlank 1.9.1
There isn't really anything new in version 1.9.1 of TrayBlank - all the real changes are more external.
First, there is now a 64-bit version. With something as small and simple as TrayBlank there shouldn't be any difference in performance between 32-bit and 64-bit executables, but it shouldn't do any harm either. The main reason I compiled a 64-bit version of TrayBlank is because I want to produce a 64-bit version of JPEG Saver - which is likely to be a lot more complicated and so I wanted to try it out on something simpler first.
The second major change is that I've used the WiX toolset to produce .msi installers instead of using the NSIS-built .exe installers I have used previously. This should make it easier for me to build installers that put the 32-bit and 64-bit versions in the right places, deal with upgrades correctly, etc. The downside is that .msi files are quite a bit bigger, being a kind of database file instead of a self-extracting executable. I think it's worth the increase in size though.
SVGGraph 2.26
Version 2.26 of SVGGraph is really just an update to the data and custom labels - there's not much else in it. Having said that, there are quite a few changes to the labels, as demonstrated by the example below.
The first update is the addition of new label types for use with the
data_label_type option. The new types are “circle”,
“square”, “linecircle”, “linebox”,
“linesquare” and “line2”. The “circle” and
“square” types are similar to the “box” style from
earlier versions, just an enclosing shape around the text label. The other
types have some more options to play with.
JPEG Saver 4.19.3
JPEG Saver 4.19.3 is another version with very few changes in it. Very few visible changes, anyway. This is the first version compiled using Visual Studio 2017 and its updated toolset, which shouldn't change how JPEG Saver looks or works but does mean I can use more up-to-date language features.
One important change that might be visible to some users is that JPEG Saver will now exit if it “loses” the Direct3D device, instead of carrying on with a black screen. Losing the device means that another process has accessed the screen for whatever reason, and JPEG Saver no longer has exclusive access. The recommended response to losing the device is to reallocate all the Direct3D resources and reset, but since JPEG Saver is first and foremost a screensaver I thought exiting would make more sense. In fact, I couldn't even think of a way to test JPEG Saver losing the device that wouldn't have made it exit anyway. But it was possible.
There are a couple of slightly more useful updates in this version too - I've added another new transition, “Unfold Push”, and some new format options for the process info item to show the elapsed time.
SVGGraph 2.25
“Improve the 3D pie slices” has been on the top of my SVGGraph to-do list for quite a long time. Version 2.25 of SVGGraph improves the 3D pie slices.
Version 2.24 added the ability to draw partial pie graphs by setting the
end_angle option, but it didn't look at all right for the 3D pie
graphs. If the example below had been drawn using version 2.24 the flat inside
faces would be missing and the gradient over the curved sides would continue
through the gap. Not good.
The improvements to the 3D pie slice drawing code means that some of the other pie graph types can be drawn in 3D now as well, so there are these two new graph types available:
The PolarArea3DGraph is just the PolarAreaGraph with the 3D code added, but I have made some changes to the existing ExplodedPieGraph as well as adding the ExplodedPie3DGraph. The code for calculating the explosion for both is in a separate file now, with the direction calculated better (because I could see from the 3D version of the exploded pie graph that the slices could sometimes end up overlapping.) There isn't a 3D version of the DonutGraph yet, but it is on the to-do list (the internal curves make it a bit more tricky).