N
Nebulon
This might be easier to answer by asking human beings than by web
searching, it seems.
The default "My Pictures Slideshow" and "My Pictures Premium" with XP
MCE simply don't cut it. The former seems to only "see" the first
thousand or so images under its root directory, as traversed
depth-first alphabetically. The latter doesn't actually seem to see
more than a couple hundred, or else it doesn't browse randomly even
when told to.
So of course I go looking on the net for them, both link-chasing and
googling, and what do I find over a span of many hours, but:
* A bevy of spyware. None of it burned me; everything with suspicious
components got deleted without install;
* Several dinky things that either a) don't work, or b) don't see
anything that is in subdirectories of the target directory;
* Several that a) want money, b) don't apparently have user supplied
dir-of-image-dirs type functionality at all, or c) don't even exist
(assorted 404s, 403s, timeouts, and hosts unknown, for the most part);
* And one that supposedly has all the needed features, and works in a
small image directory, but when loosed on a directory with several
thousand images in nested directories just displays an initial text
banner and doesn't seem to get around to actually showing images. Even
after several hours. Even though traversing the directory structure to
build up an internal list of file paths to shuffle can surely be done
in seconds -- I could write Java code to do so. I would, too, except
that I don't know the magical incantations to transmogrify a Java app
into a .scr file that behaves as Windows and Windows users would
expect. Plus I kind of suspect a screensaver with a 150+MB footprint
and a garbage collector thread is a Bad Idea(tm).
Short of buying MSVC++ and figuring out how to make the damn thing
work, plonking another $300 or so on C++ references, spending weeks
figuring out how to make tools from the warped mind of Bill Gates
generate a functioning "hello world", more weeks figuring out the
proprietary APIs for turning this into a "hello world" .scr, and so
forth, does anyone here have any suggestions? (Such as a link to a
free, spyware-free, no-strings-attached user-directory-aimable
slideshow screensaver *that scales sensibly*?)
And before you cuss me for a lazy barstidge, I spent several hours web
surfing before posting this. Try googling stuff like "slideshow
screensaver" and see all the crap that floats to the top, and try to
find anything genuinely useful or even non-malicious in that mess,
before judging me.
searching, it seems.
The default "My Pictures Slideshow" and "My Pictures Premium" with XP
MCE simply don't cut it. The former seems to only "see" the first
thousand or so images under its root directory, as traversed
depth-first alphabetically. The latter doesn't actually seem to see
more than a couple hundred, or else it doesn't browse randomly even
when told to.
So of course I go looking on the net for them, both link-chasing and
googling, and what do I find over a span of many hours, but:
* A bevy of spyware. None of it burned me; everything with suspicious
components got deleted without install;
* Several dinky things that either a) don't work, or b) don't see
anything that is in subdirectories of the target directory;
* Several that a) want money, b) don't apparently have user supplied
dir-of-image-dirs type functionality at all, or c) don't even exist
(assorted 404s, 403s, timeouts, and hosts unknown, for the most part);
* And one that supposedly has all the needed features, and works in a
small image directory, but when loosed on a directory with several
thousand images in nested directories just displays an initial text
banner and doesn't seem to get around to actually showing images. Even
after several hours. Even though traversing the directory structure to
build up an internal list of file paths to shuffle can surely be done
in seconds -- I could write Java code to do so. I would, too, except
that I don't know the magical incantations to transmogrify a Java app
into a .scr file that behaves as Windows and Windows users would
expect. Plus I kind of suspect a screensaver with a 150+MB footprint
and a garbage collector thread is a Bad Idea(tm).
Short of buying MSVC++ and figuring out how to make the damn thing
work, plonking another $300 or so on C++ references, spending weeks
figuring out how to make tools from the warped mind of Bill Gates
generate a functioning "hello world", more weeks figuring out the
proprietary APIs for turning this into a "hello world" .scr, and so
forth, does anyone here have any suggestions? (Such as a link to a
free, spyware-free, no-strings-attached user-directory-aimable
slideshow screensaver *that scales sensibly*?)
And before you cuss me for a lazy barstidge, I spent several hours web
surfing before posting this. Try googling stuff like "slideshow
screensaver" and see all the crap that floats to the top, and try to
find anything genuinely useful or even non-malicious in that mess,
before judging me.