Smile2Me
25th May 2002 10:06 UTC

Background program
At the request of Girdhari, I quickly put toghether a new background program in Delphi. It takes two arguments: bgfile and window title. Window title can be an empty string, then the titlebar disappears. The program scales a (preferrably large (so it looks nice on large resolutions too)) bitmap to full screen. A bitmap can be compressed a lot, so no problem there. But my Delphi exe is huge. Maybe someone can take this to C?

A compiled version is too large to upload to this Forum but can be found on my homepage (including all source files).


Edit1: I changed the source a bit to hide the taskbar button of the background window and to hide it from windows taskmanager.

Edit2: changed again: made the taskbar disappear completely, so full screen installer.

Edit3: made it ignore mouseclicks.

Edit4: made extra option: hide taskbar or not.

Edit5: changed taskbar behavior a bit.

Edit6: added icon support.


Is anyone actually interested in this program/utility. If not, I'll just stop developing it. Please let me know.

Have fun with it, thanks for the effort, greetz,
-Hendri.

mcgarrah
27th May 2002 12:59 UTC

...and your webpage is?

Smile2Me
27th May 2002 13:05 UTC

click www beneath this reply...

Smile2Me
30th May 2002 07:55 UTC

To let you know:

KiCHiK developed a nice bgutility in C and we are currently testing and improving it. It supports bitmaps, sound (Wave) and taskbar hiding. Coming improvements are mp3 support and scaling of images.

The first version is already available at the website of KiCHiK: http://kichik.********

You can post replies here if you want to make a comment on the utility or have some bug report.

KiCHiK, thx for the effort!

-Hendri.

Smile2Me
30th May 2002 13:41 UTC

To let you know:

Balashanker has put the program to C. It's available on my homepage.

Thx for the effort!

-Hendri.

kichik
30th May 2002 13:45 UTC

Well, it is now almost ready. No more can't find dll (stupid != instead of == :D), but for some reason it can't delete the DLL after it finishes. I can't seem to find why it can't. If someone knows why please tell me.

[edit]
Thanks to Balashanker NSISBGImage will have resizing support tomorrow. Unless someone has an objection to StretchBlt. I have never tried this function so I do not know if its algorithem is a good one, plase comment.
[/edit]

[edit #2]
Documents are now in Windows format.
[/edit #2]

[edit #3 by Smile2Me]
At a request of KiCHiK, the attachment has been deleted since there where problems with the DLL that doesn't get deleted. You will be informed about any news about this program.
[/edit #3]

kichik
31st May 2002 20:22 UTC

That DLL not being deleted seems to be a more severe than just being a left behind :cool: ... Please consider this program as beta and don't distribute it with your installers. I have put my latest version of it on my site. Please help me identify the problem.

If you don't see anything wrong with it just try running the installer a few times in a row... Just remember, Ctrl+Alt+Del contains shutdown option :D

Damn hooks! They are everywhere!!!

Oh btw, it can load JPEGs and GIFs now... ;)