News archive

29/08/2012

SVGGraph 2.9

Since the release of version 2.8 of SVGGraph I've had quite a few emails about bugs and suggestions for new features. Version 2.9 fixes some things that were broken, improves some things that were not very good and adds some things that were not there before.

Bar labels

The biggest problem fixed by this version is the sizing and spacing of the axis text labels. In previous versions the longest label was guessed from the largest number (or the longest key for associative data). This worked some of the time, but failed when the axis subdivisions produced longer strings - the largest value could be “1”, but the longest label could be “0.125”. This version finds all the labels in advance to determine the longest.

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02/08/2012

JPEG Saver 4.6.1

Very little has changed in this version of JPEG Saver, which is why the version number has only gone up by 0.0.1. On the other hand, the changes I have made should make working with multiple config files a lot easier.

The first change is that JPEG Saver's config files are now saved with the extension “.jscfg” instead of just “.cfg” - this is because it was much too generic before and used for all sorts of different config files. I've chosen “.jscfg” because it is still fairly short and I could not find any other software using it.

This change of extension (and the command-line options added in version 4.6) means we can now associate JPEG Saver config files with the screen saver executable - this is an option that is turned on by default in the updated installer, though you can turn it off if you don't want it.

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27/07/2012

SVGGraph 2.8

The words "radar graph" have been on the SVGGraph to-do list for a very long time, and every time I've seen those words I've had the song "Radar Love" by Golden Earring stuck in my head for hours afterwards. With version 2.8 of SVGGraph I can finally remove those words from the list. I'll probably end up with a song by the Shadows stuck in my head instead.

Radar love?

The radar graphs are generated by the new RadarGraph and MultiRadarGraph classes, which behave quite similarly to the LineGraph and MultiLineGraph classes. I've added a new page to explain how they work.

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13/07/2012

TrayBlank 1.3

Whilst debugging the weird problem that I had with the JPEG Saver installer, I realised that TrayBlank could do more to help me out. In earlier versions, double-clicking the icon (or using the menu or hotkey) would just send the SC_SCREENSAVE message to Windows to start the screen saver and assume it was going to work. After all, why would you want to start the screen saver if you didn't have one?

Version 1.3 adds some checking before attempting to start the screen saver. It will check that you have a screen saver selected, and that it is actually pointing to something that exists. If TrayBlank is not happy with either of these then it will show a balloon tip by its tray icon, suggesting that you fix it in the Control Panel.

Apart from that, I've also made this version cope with Windows Explorer being restarted. It doesn't happen often, but when your taskbar goes away and comes back again you really want your tray icons to come back with it. The new version is available from the downloads page.

10/07/2012

JPEG Saver 4.6

If I've done everything right, it won't look like much has changed in this new version of JPEG Saver. Internally, I've changed loads of the code in just about every part of the configuration dialog. This is because I have been stuck using an old version of the compiler to build JPEG Saver and these changes will make it possible for me to upgrade to a newer version.

Apart from the dialog changes, I've found and fixed a very annoying bug in the installer which would make it look like JPEG Saver was installed and working properly, but it wouldn't start up. The Control Panel would happily preview the screen saver, but when the time was right for it to start automatically, nothing would happen. The lesson here is don't quote the screen saver filename in the .theme file.

One big change I've made in this version is to add some command-line options to allow power users more control over where JPEG Saver keeps its config files. People have been asking me for something like this for a long time, so I hope it helps.

Read more . . .

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