Digital Photo Slide Show History

Digital Photo Slide Show History
DigitalPhotoSlideShow.com

This program was released to the general public for the first time on 09/01/1999 as version 1999.1.Since then the following revisions have been made:

Date	Version	Description of Changes
01/01/2000	2000.1	Introduced 122 transition effects between slides.
05/01/2000	2000.2	Fixed bug in autorun.inf file and corrected runtime bug.
08/25/2000	2000.3	Introduced Screen Saver program as part of package. Introduced the Installation producer as part of the package. The screen saver program also has 122 transition effects but operates as an operating system screen saver. The Installation Producer creates a custom Slide Show and Screen Saver installation program that can be shared with family and friends.
12/15/2000	2000.4	Added the ability to turn transitions off for both the screen saver and slide show. Introduced several new command line switches that allow better control of the slide show program when used on CD-ROMs. Fixed a few bugs.
02/15/2001	2001.1	Added several new features. MP3 and wave files can be played with the slide show. Program now includes an Autorun Producer that makes the process of creating CD-ROMs easier. CD-ROM slide shows that you create will not display the Shareware notice if created with Autorun Producer. Large images can now be shrunk to fit the screen. Your slide show can start with a menu of folders from which to choose. There is also a new popup menu item where a new folder can be selected. Fixed a few bugs.
03/01/2001	2001.2	Fixed a bug introduced in 2001.1 in the Installation Producer. Added multiple command line features to the Installation Producer.
03/23/2001	2001.3	An entire new program and function was added with the inclusion Digital Wallpaper Slide Show. This program allows your desktop wallpaper to act as a slide show. Features include transparent icons, hidden icons, sound on wallpaper changes, alphabetical or random slide order, center, stretch, tile and shrink modes. The Slide Show program has been improved so that the each time the screen saver is started, it begins with the last image loaded. A bug in the Autorun Producer relating to icons was corrected.
05/15/2001	2001.4	New features added to Slide Show include: 1) Random Images, 2) File Name Titles, 3) Searching subfolders is now optional. New features added to Screen Saver include: 1) Random Images, 2) File Name Titles, 3) Searching subfolders is now optional. New features added to Wallpaper Changer include: 1) Random Images, 3) Searching subfolders is now optional. Slide Show and Screen Saver were both optimized for speed. Slide Show may now be operated manually moving forward and backward through the images using the arrow keys. Several bugs were fixed. The Installation Producer now saves .mp3 files to SETUP.EXE. AutoRun Producer produced error messages for some computer configurations. This has been repaired. Digital Photo Slide Show now includes a photo resizer. This utility allows you to optimize the size of the photos you share with friends for common screen sizes. This is especially helpful for newer digital cameras that produce 3+ mega pixel images. Large images are difficult for some systems to display. This utility resizes the images to fit the specified screen resolution, thus speeding the slide show.
07/01/2001	2001.5	Fixed a bug in the screen saver introduced with the caption feature added in 2000.4. Added WinAmp support when playing music. WinAmp will be used (if available) when the Windows mp3 codec is not found. WinAmp - Copyright and Trademark Nullsoft.
08/01/2001	2001.6	Fixed a bug in the WinAmp support. Base graphics routines have been changed. The software now uses ImageEn image processing components by Hyrix Technologies. This change will pave the way for more supported image types and additional features.
08/09/2001	2001.7	Fixed a bug the found its way into the Installation Producer. Added an entirely new program that creates slides shows that can be viewed within a web browser.
09/01/2001	2001.8	Slide Show changes: Fixed a bug that occurred when the program was stopped in the middle of a transition. Added a close button in the upper right hand corner to be consistent with the Windows interface. Added a button to return to the folder menu. Added documentation for the shortcut arrow keys used to control the slide show manually from the keyboard. Added the Escape key as a short cut to exit the program. Fixed a bug in the Installation Producer to correctly set parameters for the screen saver.
10/26/2001	2001.9	Installation changes: The installation routine now allows an option for partial installation of the program. Specific components may be installed or the entire suite of tools may be installed. There is also an option to make Digital Photo Screen Saver the default system screen saver. Slide Show changes: The folder window now appears when ever the slide show is automatically stopped with a "The End.jpg" file. Music is also stopped. When the users selects a new folder and clicks OK the slide show starts automatically. The folder window now includes a favorites combo box selector which provides quick links to image folders previously displayed. If the exit button is clicked or the escape button is clicked, the slide show now pauses. If the user elects not to exit the slide show, it is returned to play mode. The music portion of the slide show was playing the second song in alphabetical order. This has been changed so that the first song in alphabetical order is played first. Several short-cut hot-keys have been added. These are displayed when you right-click on an image. Wallpaper Slide Show changes: The program now includes an assistant window that appears if the user has not selected a folder of photos to display. This should prevent users from displaying the default images as their desktop background unless they want to do so. Installation Producer changes: A Range Check Error was produced when an invalid picture folder was selected. This has been fixed. Screen Saver changes: A bug crept in the prevented editing the screen saver image folder. This has been corrected.
11/10/2001	2001.10	Slide Show changes: An error message when using the menu option with Autorun Producer has been fixed. Support for the uncompressed TIFF image format has been added. The task bar was visible when not set to autohide. Code has been added to make sure the task bar is not visible when a slide show is being displayed. Wallpaper Slide Show changes: Support for the uncompressed TIFF image format has been added. Installation Producer changes: Support for the uncompressed TIFF image format has been added. Screen Saver changes: Support for the uncompressed TIFF image format has been added. Photo Resizer changes: Support for the uncompressed TIFF image format has been added. Autorun Producer changes: an error message displayed on some configurations has be fixed.
12/20/2001	2001.11	New Program: This suite of photo sharing tools now includes Control Center which makes it easy for computer novices to access and understand all aspects of the seven different programs that make up Digital Photo Slide Show. Slide Show changes: Eliminated a harmless error that occurred on start up with Windows NT and non-administrative privileges. Major Update: Music files are now played with Microsoft Windows Media Player. Thus, the software requires version 6.4 or greater of Windows Media Player to be installed to play music files. As a result of this upgrade, Slide Show now supports .wav, .mp3, .wma and .mid files. Web Slide Show: fixed a bug in which "\" were used rather than "/". Since there was user confusion about the use of templates in Web Slide Show, that option has been removed. Templates can still be used but are not a changeable option in the user interface. The interface has also been changed so that there are only two tabs, one for a thumbnail grid and another for a web slide show. Screen Saver changes: Screen Saver now uses an entirely different set of transitions that will also be ported to Slide Show in the future. This will pave the way for more options with respect to transitions. Installation Producer: Added support for .wav, .wma and .mid music files. Installation Changes: Control Center may be launched at the end of the installation.
3/10/2002	2002.1	Digital Photo Resizer: was updated so that it can process images in subfolders making it easy to resize your entire slide show in one step. Jpeg compression options were also added. Installation Producer: was updated to fix a bug that occurred on some systems preventing a full compile of setup.exe. Web Slide Show had interface improvements to remove the confusion caused by template options. Background and text color options were also added. A page title option was added. Jpeg compression options were added. Web Slide Show now searches for files recursively in all subfolders. Program hints were upgraded in content and style. Wallpaper Changer: The "Start with Windows" feature default was changed to off. It will "Start with Windows" when that check box is checked. Further, this feature now works correctly with Windows 98 which was a problem in the past. There was a problem with settings longer than 60 minutes which was resolved. The maximum time between changes was increased to 720 minutes (12 hours). The wallpaper changer had some problems displaying wallpaper with a few systems when the shrink setting was off. This has been resolved. Finally, there was a problem with with some systems that caused an unwanted change to the desktop background pattern. This has also been resolved. Program hints were upgraded in content and style. Autorun Producer: An error that occurred on a few Windows 98 systems was resolved. Program hints were upgraded in content and style. Installation: The installation program now gives a warning if Wallpaper Slide Show is running during installation or uninstallation. You must exit Wallpaper Slide show before installing or uninstalling the software. Slide Show: A change was made so that a message about the lack of Windows Media Player support is displayed as a last resort. Internal .mp3 player support is attempted first. Screen Saver: An error that occurred under unusual circumstances showing "list index out of bounds" was resolved. A bug that crept in with the last version that prevented editing the source directory was resolved.
5/03/2002	2002.2	Slide Show: New transition technology was ported to Slide Show. Transitions are smoother and display the same on all computers regardless of CPU performance. Movie files are now supported in slide show. These include .mpg, .mpeg and .avi files. Several configuration options were added pertaining to video support. Slide Show uses Microsoft Windows ActiveX Media Player to display movies. Thus, Media Player version 6.4 or higher is required. Windows 2000, ME and XP are shipped with this support. Windows 95 and 98 may require an update. If the correct version of media player is not found Slide Show will direct the user to the appropriate download site to obtain the current version of Media Player. If you distribute the Microsoft Media Player installer (mp71.exe) with your slide show CD-ROM, Slide Show will prompt the user to install media player. Default transitions for a slide show may now be selected. Web Slide Show: Now you can set the maximum number of rows per page for the thumbnail view. If there are too many thumbnail images to fit on a single page, then multiple thumbnail pages will be created with a single index page that links to each thumbnail page. The full view page also include links to the next and prior images. Autorun Producer: Default transitions for an entire slide show may be selected. Autorun producer now creates DSS.INI which controls transitions and other features of the slide show. A new button has been added that starts Windows Explorer to display the files created with Autorun Producer. Screen Saver: Transitions were revised so that only the image area is involved in the transition rather than the entire screen. Movies were NOT added to screen saver. Control Center: The opening transition screen was removed because of difficulties caused with certain video drivers. The buttons were also changed. Installation Producer: The function remains the same but it has been ported to a wizard format that moves the user through pages of questions and creates a custom setup.exe program that contains the user's slide show. Installation: The installation program now provides an option for desktop icons. This feature was formerly automatic.
6/01/2002	2002.3	Slide Show: This version represents a significant upgrade in features. Slide Show now supports captions for individual photos. Each caption can have its own transition, transition duration, background color, font color, border and translucency. In addition each photo can have individual settings including its own transitions, transition duration, and photo duration. Control Center: Added Stretch Graphic as a slide show option that can be controlled within Control Center.
6/23/2002	2002.4	Slide Show: This version changed a few button graphics and the menu folder button is now available in the royalty free version. A few minor changes include the fact the when the menu folder is displayed, the current slide show folder is displayed in the folder tree. If the photo properties button or default transitions buttons are clicked during a CD-ROM slide show, a notice is displayed the these options cannot be changed because the CD-ROM is read only. Captions now support multiple paragraphs. Most importantly, the documentation has been updated.
7/7/2002	2002.5	Slide Show: Some very helpful features were added in this version. A new Print Dialog button has been added to the tool bar so that you can print your images directly from Slide Show. Simply click the Print button to print your photos. Fifteen new transitions have been added bringing the total to 135. The new transitions include a Cool 3D roll transition, water fall and several interlaced transitions. Captions now support different fonts. Finally, two new rotate buttons have been added to the tool bar. You can rotate your images directly from Slide Show. An error that occurred on systems with an invalid printer configuration has been resolved
9/05/2002	2002.6	Slide Show: Eliminated a harmless and occasional "Out of Bounds" error message. Eliminated a division by zero error that resulted from corrupted jpeg files. Added GIF and PNG file format support. Slide Show now supports the following formats: Image Types: .bmp, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .tiff, png, & .gif Video Types: .mpg, .mpeg, & .avi Added a delete button to the photo caption/properties window. Music may now be turn on, off or on the the next song with each individual photo from the photo caption/properties window. Resizer: Made the border of the main window resizable. Autorun Producer: Added control over mpeg and avi video display. DSS.INI now includes complete configuration information so that CD produced with Autorun Producer is not required to autorun to function properly and can be run optionally from Windows Explorer. Web Slide Show: Added a "Cancel" button to optionally interrupt the image resizing process. Web Slide Show now uses a fast linear resampling method that produces better looking reduced images and thumbnails.
11/15/2002	2002.7	Autorun Producer: Fixed bug that crept in with version 2002.6 relating to creation of dss.ini settings. Made the window border sizable for large font support. Added a "Pause at The End" option so that the slide show can be paused at the end of the slide show without showing the folder menu. Slide Show: Random display of images does not repeat an image until all the images have been displayed at least once. Updated the method for detection of Windows Media Player to detect version 7 and 9 more reliably. Further, there is no notice regarding the absence of Windows Media Player unless it is necessary to play video or music. Fixed folder menu so that images are displayed starting with first image after a new folder is selected. "The End.jpg" is no longer necessary to show the Folder Menu at the end of the slide show. Added a "Pause at The End" option to configuration window. The Photo Properties window now retains the options selected for the previous photo and applies those to each future photo property until modified by the user. Image rotation is now lossless. PC Slide Show now includes a Thumbnail Photo Finder. Viewing a slide show but want to skip to a particular image? Click the thumbnail viewer icon and select the thumbnail of the image you want to view and click OK. The slide show automatically skips to that image. Web Slide Show: Added the option to show file names in the Thumbnail View. Digital Photo Resizer: Now includes a resampling option that allows for different algorithms during the resizing process. Resampling filters include: None - Fastest, Fast Linear, Lanczos - Slowest. Also included GIF and PNG support. Fixed error that was displayed if no compatible images were found. Control Center: Removed Show Folder option because it is redundant.
01/31/2003	2003.1	Web Slide Show: Now offers three different resampling filters that determine the quality of the resized images. Now includes a home page link to return users to your home page.