Monthly Progress Report for May 2012 (part 2)

I was hoping to have a nonfunctioning preview out by now. But the program code is twice as large as it should be, and is a little slow, mostly because it still has 100% of the version 5 code underneath.

But on a plus note, May was a very productive month for the program. I have the GUI all programmed, and some functionality programmed in. I had to create a clickable link, it's a lot like the hyperlink control in Winforms. I had to create my own version of a numeric up-and-down control.

For April I plan to have some functionality in the program, at least some basic functionality. I have also begun removing some legacy code that has not been needed. Began restructuring the namespace and classes to be more pragmatically efficient.

At the end of April I plan on having an alpha release, even if it just has basic functionality.

 

Sincerely,
William McCormick
McCormick Computers
http://www.mccormickcomputers.com

Monthly progress report for May 2012

I'm hoping to make these progress reports a monthly thing. I think it's a great way for me to see how the progress of the development is going.
I've finally worked out a system in WPF to display a system tray icon have the functionality and have it work exactly like I need. This is done by an open source library, located here http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/36468/WPF-NotifyIcon.

I also hope to have been a non-functioning development preview. For people wondering what some of the code is going to look like and what the window will look like, here is a picture of the designer for XAML.

click image to enlarge

By the end of this month i should have a better design and a non-functioning preview put online.

 

Here's an image of the code behind for everybody that is curious.
click image to enlarge

Backround Cycler version 6 Progress report.

What is going on with Backround Cycler version 6?
Upgrades to the user interface are slow, some of the features that I use in the winforms version are just not present in WPF. This is leaving me the need to extend a lot of the WPF classes. WPF is a challenging framework, but fun to learn.

I am about 50% complete with the GUI upgrades. I had to step back and pull apart the source code to version 5, because I had an e-mail with a bug report. After investigating in talking to the user, I had determined that it was a problem on his and not mine.

So far few things I like about the upgrades to this program are, it looks better, I have better control over how it's displayed (pragmatically).

Backround Cycler has won another award

Backround Cycler has won some awards from softoxi

I am also designing a awards page to host all the Awards that i have won so far

Strange things will be happening in SVN

I have a few people that like to check out the Development code that is in the SVN. As some people know, Backround Cycler is going into version 6 and with that i want to move from WinForms to WPF. this will require that i redo the Projects. I am switching over to WPF to learn WPF as Backround Cycler was a way to learn C# and WinForms

Backround Cycler Version 5 released

I am proud to announce Backround Cycler version 5 was released today. Changes from version 4 are minor but the list is :

• Redesigned the error reporting system, It is now windows Vista and 7 compatible.
• Changed some wording inside of the program.
• Added a tooltip that will display the current desktop background that is displayed.
  • known limitations are that it will still display the last image selected if the user changes the desktop background using the built in Windows background changer
• Code cleanup.

You can download the program here
You can download the source code here [or in a 7z file]

Why codename “V6”

A question that I have gotten on the remake of Backround Cycler is “Where did you get the codename ‘V6’ if it is not Version 6?” Well I did not get the codename “V6” as a version number, as a matter of fact the codename is a reference to a 6 cylinder engine inside of cars. I believe the move to C++/win32++ will produce a better program. As I, the developer, will have better control over the memory. One major problem is C# is the Garbage collector is not clearing the image right after I no longer need it. It is not uncommon for the program to have 3-4 pictures loaded into memory even long after the program is done using them and properly called the destroy methods. The only time the program seems to clear the image is when it loads a large image (+10 mb)