News archive
TrayBlank 1.4
Version 1.4 of TrayBlank came about because version 1.3 had an annoying habit of disappearing from the tray. I was never sure if it was crashing, closing down cleanly in response to something I was unaware of, or if I was just being stupid and closing it myself without thinking. (I do have a strange tendency to close programs that I'm still using.)
This version should recover better from things that make the tray go away, and if you attempt to run a new copy of the program then it will bring the old one to the front instead of quitting silently.
One genuine new feature of this version is a progress bar - it shows how long it will be until Windows automatically starts the screen saver (if you don't move the mouse or press a key before then). This is just a guess based on how long it has been since the last user activity - many programs can prevent the screen saver from running by sending fake input to Windows or by adjusting system settings.
SVGGraph 2.13
Version 2.13 of SVGGraph adds one new graph type, a few new global options, makes more customisation available in the structured data fields and fixes a few bugs.
The example above shows the new “PopulationPyramid” class in action, a population or age pyramid of values that I pulled out of nowhere. It works like a horizontal stacked bar graph, but with values alternating sides of a central, vertical X-axis. Because both sides are positive, it does not support negative values.
To highlight the strange decline in the male population between the ages of
30-39 on the graph, I've given the bar a thick purple dashed line using some
new structured data fields: stroke_width,
stroke_colour and stroke_dash.
(stroke_dash is also available as a global option for use with all
the bar and pie graphs.)
JPEG Saver 4.9.1
This new version of JPEG Saver is just a quick bug fix - version 4.9 has a simple error in it that I missed during testing, which meant items other than logo items failed to validate with a nonsensical error message and the end result that you could not add them.
There is one other fix in this version - I found that occasionally the JPEG Saver process would fail to exit if you tried to quit while a transition was in progress, due to waiting on an event that had been cancelled. Unlike most concert-goers, processes will happily wait forever for events to happen without getting bored and wandering off to the nearest pub.
The updated installer is available from the downloads page.
TagCanvas 2.2
The new version of TagCanvas adds two functions for rotating the cloud and a couple of extra options.
The new functions are demonstrated by the first two buttons under the example
canvas above. TagToFront rotates the cloud so that the desired tag
is at the front of the cloud. RotateTag rotates the cloud so that
the tag is wherever you want it to be - the position is specified using a
longitude and latitude. This example always rotates a tag to the same position,
though it is quite tricky to figure out where. If you can't figure out where the
tags are going, highlight this spoiler text:
latitude -30, longitude 90, which
is on the right and below the middle.
The choice of which tag to move can be specified using its id (the id attribute
of the <a> element) or the text inside it, or by using an
index into TagCanvas' array of tags. The last option is most useful when you
want to pick a random tag because the order in the array might not match the
original order of the tags on the page.
JPEG Saver 4.9
The biggest change in this version of JPEG Saver is the addition of support for loading files in the WebP image format. In case you haven't heard of it before, it's a bit like the JPEG format in that it supports lossy compression, and a bit like PNG in that it also supports lossless compression and alpha channels.
Loading WebP images is supported for the main image, background images and logo items (with alpha channel transparency). The WebP format supports EXIF and other metadata, but I have not yet attempted to add support for loading it into JPEG Saver. Expect this to work in a future version.
Other changes in this version are an extra slider in the logo item dialog for setting an alpha blending value, an extra checkbox on the background tab for maintaining the aspect ratio of images when scaled to fit the screen, and four new transitions: “Doors”, “Wall tiles”, “Fold” and “Unfold”.