yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] SeanFromSoCal:
Shantz, its a great piece of software like I've always said. Does exactly what we would want in a today changer, much better than all the others out there including the commercial ones. And zero resources and from my experience zero bugs too =) Its virtually perfect as is. What else did you have in the to-do list that you didn't get a chance to get around too?

The only things I could see that might need some improvement was:

- Option to select either sequential or random wallpaper/theme rotation

- Individual checkboxes for each theme/image type to be cycled so you can select multiple.

- A way to create a list of designated theme folders and have a pulldown to quick select the active one.

OR

- A way to create a list of theme folders and have checkbox enable/disable for each. This way you can quickly enable/disable which themes you are in the mood for and not have to be restricted to just one folder worth. I have like 7 different subfolders - cars, scenery, abstract, etc. What if I get sick of the cars and just want it to change between scenery and abstract -- I can then enable only those two and disable all the others.

For this you can probably create registry entries like A_C did on his S2U2 as ExceptionEXEs. In this situation...

Folder0 = string(\Storage Card\Today\Cars)

Folder0Enable = decimal(1)

Folder1 = string(\Storage Card\Today\Scenery)

Folder1Enable = decimal(0)

Folder2 = string(\Storage Card\Today\Abstract)

Folder2Enable = decimal(1)

If the randomization across multiple folders is complex then maybe just have the quick active folder selection pulldown. Or perhaps the software can create a cache file in the ShantzTodayChanger program folder that has a list of all the wallpapers/themes with full paths that it can randomly (or sequentially) select from it. The cache file can be automatically re-created whenever you run the TdyChangerCfg.

Sorry I'm rambling. And I apologize I'm not a Win/WinMo developer (only a PHP/website developer) so can't really help with implementation.

But hey honestly the software is just great as is. If none of the above ideas ever make it off the ground I will still be a happy camper.

And with the running external program feature you have built into it your software your software will be on my device for a very long time. Now I just need to take some time and learn Mortscript so that I can have my today screen, S2U2, WAD (or maybe in the future -- PointUI if its becomes skinnable with a JPG/GIF background) all consistent to each other. =)

Thanks again Shantz. We really appreciate your effort. Also Happy New Year to you too =)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
Thnx for the nice words, sean :)

And you are right about the things that I wanted to change/add

The 2nd option, did you mean mixing of tsk's, jpgs, etc for switching (like switching to a jpg, then a tsk, then maybe a png, etc). If yes, then that is what I had in mind.

For the implementation of the third option, I had two things in mind

1 is the way that you suggested, which would be a cleaner approach

2nd is a modification of the existing masking capability.

Don't want to enable more than 1 folder (theme type) at a time though, because it would bog down the program a bit.

I had earlier thought about the cache option but its not a good approach, because this means extra burden of running TdyChgrCfg again and again whenever you add or delete a file from a folder.

About the rambling, it was a quite good ramble, I'd say :). And you dont need to be a WinMo developer to think of a feature/implementation, common sense is all you need, rest is all "syntax" ;)

And yeah, there is one more thing, that I wanted to add. Integrating with weather programs (or any other programs). Since these programs will store the current weather "type" in registry, we can configure the changer to read this registry, and set the theme predesignated for that string. (This thing can also be made a bit fuzzy depending on the type of registry setting, like fixed descriptive words or cumulative of temp, humidity, precipitation etc)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] SeanFromSoCal:
The weather idea sounds great. I've seen it incorporated with WAD and WeatherPanel and it was pretty nice. But having it perform with zero resources, still having full control of your today plugins, and not having to buy two seperate commercial programs to pull off the effect sounds great.

Shantz, yeah I'm good with ideas but unfortunately have no ability to help turn the ideas into WinMo code. I'm having a hard enough time trying to keep on top of my website development programming languages with the oop php, css, javascript, ajax, flash, etc. Only if there was more hours in a day. Tisk tisk
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] thekrush:
+1 for the Random Option on your next revision...Was using ThemeMaster (Commercial) but liked your program better! Keep up the good work! :D
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] rtakeo:
a fade (in/out) transition between the images when changing would be perfect... try to developer this... or just a way like the A_C S2U2 developer did for the transition images option.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] erikbolduc:
hey Shantz !

Ive noticed something using your program....

If I shut down my pocket pc completely...then boot it.....then start your program......

the first wallpaper that is put in the "todays background" will get stuck as the "start menu background" until i restart the pocket pc !

the "todays background" will keep changing, like its suppose to, but when I click the start menu, the background will still be the first image that was loaded by the program.

also, a soft reset will reset the "start menu background" to match the current "todays background".

do you have an idea what can cause that ?

see the picture included.

thanks in advance for your help !
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
eric:

I wasnt able to reproduce this issue. It works ok in my phone. Is the rocky theme the first theme in your folder?

which phone do u have?
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] SeanFromSoCal:
It could be a partially corrupt TSK file. I've came across quite a bit that I've downloaded from PocketPCthemes and other websites that get stuck somehow. Not a problem with Shantz cause they have a problem changing when I use BVRP Theme Manager too. The only way to unstuck the bad TSKs are by using the Setting->Today to change the theme.

You might want to load the theme on a PC based theme manager/editor like ThemeGenCE and see if something looks out of place. If this is happening with a bunch of themes, then not sure. I don't have a problem with Shantz on mine and I have like 500 themes that it switches between just fine (as long as I get rid of the bad ones).
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] lazzer:
Title Bar Color

When I use your program, sometimes the color gets stuck and all my themes will have the same color. Is there a fix
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] davidebeatrice:
urgent!!!:-)

it's possible to set a specific order to change wallpaper? i.e. from 1.jpg to 6.jpg?

or it's possible to set specific wallpaer for specifics hours? i.e 1.jpg for 1am 2.jpg for 2am, etc..?

thx!!!

not SOLVED

sorry...not solved..always wallpaer random...

how can i solve?

sorry for my english...
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
glad u got it solved :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
Download:

Latest Downloads can now be found at http://tech.shantanugoel.com
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] davidebeatrice:
sorry...not solved....
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
hmm david, basically, the app uses the wm findfile api to get the wallpapers, now generally they are picked in alphabetical order, but it is not gauranteed by the OS. Can you try with alphabetical naming instead of number? because I can make it explicitly circular/random but that means caching up the wallpaper names, which means either:

1) performance loss

2) or losing the ability to just put in new wallpapers into the folder and not having to config again.

not to mention that in both cases, a lot of code will have to eb changed.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] davidebeatrice:
i've been tried with alphabetical order but show always random...

i was trying to make a "daylight" effect to today, so when it's night showing night, sunrise-sunrise, sunset-sunset, daylight-daylight, like in "pisa theme" of the samsung sgh d900...:(
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
shantzg001 - Great App - have been using it on and off for the past few weeks!

+1 on adding a "random" function to this!!!

Has anybody else had problems with themes not changing colors correctly on WM5 devices?

All of my themes have different shading, etc. for the top/bottom bar (given the WM5 theme goofiness) - that always display correctly when selecting the theme using the "Today" control panel applet. However, using TdyChanger, the top and bottom bars always revert to a shade of blue. (ironically, you can see the correct colors flash for a second, before the blue kicks in).

I've attached an example (using both a compress .jpg and .png image)

For reference, I use ThemeMaker X for creating my theme files...

Any thoughts on troubleshooting would be appreciated!
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] daxliniere:
Hey Shantz,

I had an idea for that.

On first run, a list should be generated, the list could be randomised at this point.

This list should be stored on disk instead of RAM.

When the timing interval is reached, the text file is opened, the first line is read, wallpaper is loaded, first line is moved to the bottom of the file, file is saved, wait for next timing interval.

As for refreshing wallpapers, this should be a 2nd notification timer, set by the user. I personally would set it to 1 week, but some poeple may set it to 1 day or even 1 hour, I guess.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
@pw-man: This is a "sort-of" known issue. I say sort of because this seems to happen only with a few themes, but for a majority of the themes it works fine. But there is no solution yet. Can you try with a few already made themes and not using the ones you made?

@dax: The list thing is what I had in mind while listing point no. 2) (however in a diff way to increase randomness). This way we lose the easiness we have in adding more themes to the fray, as now every time to add themes, you will have to run config again.

Anyways, a good news is that I'm planning to work on the program again after a looooooong break. But I'll be on vacation for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully there should be a brand new release (with a lot of rewritten code) by the middle of march.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
ok - I've run a couple of tests using the Snowboard theme from WM5 (base theme)

1. I copied it to a different directory (used by TdyChanger) and made a change to the BaseHue using Theme GeneratorCE.

a. Loaded via TdyChanger did not pick up the change.

b. Copied to the \windows directory and loaded via the Today screen control panel applet and it did pick up the change.

2. Took the same base theme and updated the WM5 color using ThemeMaker X.

a. Loaded via TdyChanger did not pick up the change.

b. Copied to the \windows directory and loaded via the Today screen control panel applet and it did pick up the change.

Not being a WM5 Theme expert (other than I love building them). I'm hopeful that helps in at least understand the context of the problem....

I was hoping that it might be the "theme generator" that is causing the problem, by not setting a value/key correctly.

Anybody else that can assess other WM5 theme tools that can get their themes working with TdyChanger?

shantzg001 - Looking forward to you "getting back to work" on this! Great App!!!!

pw-man
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
@pw-man: can you attach all three versions of this theme here: (base, changed by theme gen ce and changed by thememaker x) i'll take a look..
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
Here ya go - with a few screen shots

1. The three .tsk files named with the generating program.

2. Two .jpg with the prefix PC showing a screen shot of the theme in the appropriate program

3. Five .jpg with the prefix PPC showing a screen shot of the PPC with the theme selected via either TDChanger or the Today Control Panel App (I did not do a screen capture of the original theme via the today.)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
pw-man, I've downloaded ur themes. will try to take a look but not sure whether ill get sm time before weekend as I'm on a vacation (sort of). If I'm not able to look at them right now, Ill definitely test them out by next Tuesday
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
shantzg001 - no worries on timing... Thanks for looking! :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
I went through the themes and found the bug. Actually my program looks at the most prominent colors in the theme and determines the color to be used for the bars (like what windows mobile does) but the bug is that if there is already a predefined color present , as done by any theme maker software (BaseHue), it still calculates the "most matching" color on its own. Its pretty easy to fix it. will do it when I am back from vacation...
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
Way cool - Thanks!!! Look forward to this update!

pw-man
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
hey pw-man, I got some time today to put in a quick fix..but dont have my phone with me to test it..can you test it out..just unzip the attached file and replace your existing ShantzTodayChanger.exe with this one. Let me know the results...
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
ok - had a chance to test... some weird results.

The original theme comes up with grey on the top/bottom as opposed to the original blue hues.

The theme created with Theme X comes up correctly :-)

The them created with ThemeGenCE comes up wrong.

However there is an interesting phenomena that I can't quite explain - when going through the full rotation, (starting with the original and then Theme X and then ThemeGenCE), the Theme X colors stayed the same (i.e. the gold color for the header/footer stays the same and does not change to the blue and green in the other theme files)...

pw-man
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
@pw-man: I just remembered why I hadnt put in that "fix" earlier. because it would interact a bit weirdly with the "previous" theme. But have figured out, that I can put in another small bit of code to handle this issue. Might have a new build for you to test out by tomorrow. Just came back, but a bit travel-sick right now :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
@shantzg001 - no worries - feel better first, then code ;-)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
Hey pw-man, sorry for the delay. Here is the new build. Please test it and let me know the results.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
@shantzg001 - sorry for the slow response, am on vacation and less on my PC. I did get a chance to do some testing tonight, here is what I found out:

Mostly mixed results, the original WM5 theme (snowboard) does not display the correct colors - instead, retaining the color of the previous theme.

The same is true for the theme generated from ThemeGenCE - it retains the color of the previous theme.

HOWEVER - the themes made in ThemeMaker X did display correctly! :-)

As an additional test, I created two additional variations of the same theme using ThemeMaker X, and switching between the three of them resulted in the correct colors being displayed each time....

So at least at this point, using ThemeMaker X to create themes will work!

Not sure what the nasty bug is that is causing the hiccup with standard themes and ThemeGenCE themes....

Happy to test more as you dwell on this :-)

pw-man
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
hey pw-man. Thnx for the test.

I've also got my phone back now. So will do some tests myself before giving out a fix..
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
Updated to v1.53:

Changelog:

1.53 - 23-March-08 -> RECOMMENDED UPDATE

i)Theme Color Detection has been improved a lot. Should work much more accurately now.

For queries, bug reports, feature requests, updates and downloads, visit ShantzTodayChanger Home Page
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
@pw-man: You can download the latest version (1.53 , see link above). Fixed the problem you were having (tested with the themes u attached).
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] pw-man:
@shantzg001 - am trying right now - I will likely owe you a beer for this one :-)

Of course, a function to randomize the item (theme, wallpaper, etc.) selected for a change would be a nice feature ;-)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] LeoDH:
Hi shantzg001,

I'm testing this app on WM6 Emulator but it don't work :(

I decompressed the whole program in Program Files folder in device, then ran the config. Everything seemed ok, when I clicked apply there were a notice said "ShantzToday Changer was set". But I waited for about 30 min but my today was still the same though the interval time was set to 600 sec, which was 10 min.

Even when I tried to copy some pics (.jpg) to the installation folder in order not have to choose different input folder, which I put in my miniSD card, and is supposed to be the reason of this malfunction, it still do not work :(

So far I have tried many times but nothing happened. Do you have any suggestion ???

P/s: I'm testing with your latest version 1.53, which is supposed to work well with all WM5 and WM6, right?
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
@LeoDH:

Yes, it works with all WM5 as well as WM6 phones. Also tested with WM5 emulator.

Can you post a screenshot of your settings and also the values of the registry settings under HKLM/software/shantztodaychanger?
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] LeoDH:
Thanks for your response. Below are some screenshot as you asked (I tried to embed pics here but it dont work, please dont mind clicking on the links below, sorry for that)

As I said before, I tested this app in the most simple condition (no different input folder, no exe, no mask, ...). Below is the installation folder, which is put in Device/Program Files, and as you can see, I put some pics in the installation folder for today-wallpaper cycling:

http://upviet.com/uploader/view/4503/installation_folder.jpg

And there are settings when run TdyChangerCfg.exe:

http://upviet.com/uploader/view/4503/setting.jpg

About the reg., I didn't find any reg about your app. in HKLM/software/, but I found the below under HKCU/software/shantztodaychanger/. So is there something wrong with my device or did you mistype it?

http://upviet.com/uploader/view/4503/registry.jpg

Hope that it's what you asked for :)

And there are some my question and suggestions:

1. I wonder in order to change today wallpaper, does your app. require to run in background or just make some tweak in registry? Because I checked the running programs using Mermaid but found no app related to your program running?

2. After a soft reset, is it necessary to run the "startTdyChgnr.lnk" again? If yes, can you make it possible to apply the change immediately after tabbing on the "startTdyChgnr.lnk", not have to wait till the first cycle?

Otherwise, if the app automatically run after a soft reset, can you make it change today wallpaper right after being activated?

(about the 2., maybe they're already in your app.'s function, but given the fact that this app. did not work well with me, I just give out my 2 cents ideas for your consideration)

Thanks a lot for your concern.

P/s: I'm also testing on my XDA Zinc, WM6.1 but so far it dont work.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
LeoDH:

Ur settings look fine. Sorry abt the registry path, that was a typo on my part.

Not sure why it didn't work for u. Will do some testing tomorrow if I get some time to see if I can reproduce it, but it is the most basic setting that has been tested again and again. let's see.

Can you do one thing: Pls check ur notification queue to see if there is any notification for shantztodaychanger present (u can do that using sw like Dotfred's task manager, sktools or memmaid)

Abt ur queries:

1. The app doesn't run in background. This is by design, to save battery life and ram. It works using notifications.

2. The app works even after soft resets so you don't need to do anything. Though right now, it doesnt give you an option to change immediately after wake up, but its easy to do that. You can create a shortcut to the shantztodachanger.exe, and pass a parameter "-c" (without quotes) to it. Whenever u click on this shortcut ur image shud change. For startup, put this shortcut in ur startup folder and ur image will change immediately on startup.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] LeoDH:
Hi shantzg001,

Thanks for your tip, I do make a shortcut with "-c" parameter and It works. It changes today pic everytime I click on it, Great :D

As you said, I do notice about the notification queue and there is a notification of your app. But the wierd thing is when the time shown in the notification comes, there is no change in today wall papers, which is supposed to be changed, right?

The more wierd thing is on WM6 Emulator, as I said above, when the time shown in the notification comes, the today pic does not change. But if I have a soft reset after this time, the device is back with new today pic :-?

But it's not the same in my WM6.1 Zinc, the today pic doesn't change even after a soft reset :(

I have no idea what's happening :confused: So far, I have to temporary pleased with changing manually by a shortcut with "-c" parameter :D
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
Hmm,

The emulator behaves weirdly some times, so it must be one of those things.

I haven't really tested it on WM6.1 as of now but am planning to install it on my phone in a few days (might take upto a couple of weeks as I'm very busy these days), will look into it after that.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] LeoDH:
Thanks for your attention :)

Will keep following this thread for your update :)
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] LeoDH:
Hi shantzg001,

It seems ok for my Zinc now after I tried to extend the interval from 600s to 14400s. Thanks for your great app :)

And there's another question. Is it possible to make this app run only when the device is in idle or suspend mode? Because if we're using device when the interval time comes, it might cause a hang, especially if we choose a .exe to be run, i.e. oxios hibernate.

Of course we can make it run once a day only in special time when we're sure not using the device, i.e. midnight when we're sleeping :D

But what I mean here is we can still choose to have today wallpaper changed several times a day. When the interval comes, if the device is idle, the app will be activated to change today wallpaper and run the .exe. Otherwise, it shouldn't be activated.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] shantzg001:
@LeoDH: Thats a nice suggestiong. Will keep that in my mind, when I start working on the next update.
[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] LeoDH:
Hi shantzg001,

It's me again :D

I don't know why but your app. seems to support to cycle about 10 pics :( I got about 70 pics in the input folder, all in .jpg format, but only 10 pics are cycled. Is there any way to fix it?

And is it possible to choose pic at random, instead of in order as default ?