yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
The error message is wrong :) The picture on 25th had a weird format (much higher width than height) which the app didn't like for a wallpaper (todays picture is working again). Yesterday they had a video! I have to put something back in that if only one picture is found that has to be used even if small/wrong format.
[Android Apps and Games] murphyinspain:
Nice wallpapers, i will include some of these on my android apps review site
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
Oh, you're absolutely right. Got a new picture now. Thanks!

I'm wondering: Is it possible to have error messages with more information for the user?
[Android Apps and Games] thongdtk3:
Thanks so much ..............

:D:D:D:D
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.2.3 with fixes for your crash reports - thanks!

There is one crash reported 4 times which I am unable to avoid without more information about the target website:

*** HELP PLEASE ***

Can the user who reported a crash on Mar 28, 2011 5:53:44 PM in version 0.97.2.2 with message "thanks" please write me an email or private message? I am unable to fix this one without some info about the circumstances! All others: it would be very helpful when you add (if possible) the url you used when the app crashed to your report.

*** HELP PLEASE ***

In this version I have also changed to "tap to reload" feature to something I found on the net to avoid also reloading when an Icon is tapped. Also it sometimes (depending on loading speed) has not been working after reboot (until selected in the settings again).

The widget is still not standalone - working on that next (if I didn't destroy too much good stuff with this version).

I also want to give better error messages but that needs a little more time - with this version I hope there are less errors because now always a picture should be visible if there is one on the site (even if it is only 1x1 pixel).

I think I found your site which you didn't include in your post (androidappsbest.b... ;) I am refreshing every hour now waiting for something to read :))
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
versions 0.97.2.4

Changed time format to 24hours for all to avoid a crash happening there before for 24hour time format users (like us in germany). Hope that is still ok for US users ...
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.3 has a first version of Live! widget

Live! Widget is there and working (can have issues - does not on my phone since yesterday but on emulator with android 1.6 I see graphical glitches). This is a first version to have it tested :)

At the moment you can not select different preferences for every widget so there is only the same picture in all widgets. I have to think about the best solution for this but I would like to be able to watch several WebLiveWallpaper widgets with different views at the same time ...

Also there is no battery saving code in the widget at the moment so it can consume much more power (depends on refresh rate) than the wallpaper.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.3.1 pauses the widget when screen is off

A widget will always use more power/data than a live wallpaper* but now at least it is paused when screen is off. So better only use the widget with low refreshing stuff/simple websites/no animations ...

* That means when they are doing the same task. Because a live wallpaper knows when it is visible and a widget does not.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4 has the live widgets working

Now you can fill up the homescreen with different widgets until you are unable to watch your live wallpaper and unable to disconnect the charger ;)

I recommend to use only less often refreshing stuff for widgets ... but it is nice to watch several sites at once. I will have to make the website area selection better usable. Then this can be better used as a webwidget.

(Widget programming sucks and there are a lot of bugs in (older versions of) Android with the widget setup!)
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
As always, thanks for your hard work. Widget is working well stock froyo Desire. I haven't encountered any crashes for several versions.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.2

I found a way to detect if user is on homescreen for widgets. So I can now switch the updates off when in apps like a live wallpaper. This is the experiment with that code :) Needs a new permission to get the active apps.

Also contains a fix for wrong restart after Android killed the service to free memory.

There is not enough memory when a number of widgets, the wallpaper and the app are active at the same time ... this will have to be improved (with better error messages/lower quality fallback pictures, ...).
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
child app picofday

While hunting down bugs and looking for memory issues (causing the widgets to update much slower than correct) I splitted some stuff and thought a standalone picture of the day app would be useful for a lot of people who do not use all the other features ...

So now there is a simplified child of WebLiveWallpaper called picofday in market:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dngames.picofday

I hope you also like it. And it will help me find some bugs in a simpler environment :)
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.3 fixes some memory issues

And local pictures/files had a wrong huge memory overhead causing the wallpaper+widgets to reach the app limit of 16-24MB too easy which did not result in crashes but constantly failing refreshes for a longer but 'random' time (until mem was dropped).

Also I finally composed a new nicer icon ...

Known issue (there is a crash report to market open, I read it!):

If your target website url includes a ',' - saving it will most certainly crash!
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.4 has a new context menu for all widgets

With a tap on one of the widgets you can now reload (to refresh manually for example if you enabled WIFI only), view the current image in original quality in the browser or enter the settings as before. The 1x1 Wallpaper settings widget now also has that menu which is useful if you sometimes want to have a look at the full wallpaper picture behind all your icons and widgets.

Also there is a new type of "webcam" where timestamped pictures from a webpage are used. As an example the Fort St. Vrain Station Eagle cam is added.

Widget refresh should also be improved now and power consumption of the live widgets is now near to that of a live wallpaper - consumes only power when it is visible. I have six widgets (pic of day, galleries, local photos and webcams) and a webcam wallpaper running now for more than four days and max power consumption with heavy usage has been 9% (might be more with mjpg, complex website refreshing or animated gif?) - much lower than display, mobile, wifi, os and system ... most of the time it didn't even appear in the list.
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
Like the new icon, and the new menu is great. Thanks for your hard work!

Does the settings widget use the same power as the larger widgets?
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.5 can handle lists of refreshing pic webcams better

If you set a site as target url containing a number of webcam refreshing images a number of refreshes before changing the cam can now be specified in the advanced settings. So you see a cam with moving picture for some time until the cam itself is switched to the next one. A little "show" in one "site" ... See the New York Earthcam webcam quickselection.

Some bugs got fixed and ad images are filtered out by a blacklist of adservers.

No. It is notified when the picture changes but only every 15 minutes (unless site changed) and sets the current one then. Its a normal widget and not live/updating itself.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.6

Shows a fallback webview if no good wallpaper image was found (apod today) ...

Webview pause seems not to work on all pages/devices so I added another (hidden) method to pause/resume it. If you see battery drain for an animated but invisible webpage please send me a link if possible so I can test it myself.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.7 removes the fallback and error message

That fallback idea fell back onto me :)

Also since the last version I tried to reduce peak memory consumption by updating only one content at the same time but that caused some new problems ... and didn't really enable my old low memory phone to update all seven widgets ...

I replaced/updated some of the no longer working webcams and updated the nice new york cam collection.
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
Great work, as always. Keep it up!

Not experiencing any problems for the latest few releases.

I probably spend more time messing around with this app than I do actually using the phone. :rolleyes:
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.12 has some internals rewritten

Because of some easter holidays I did not make big visible progress.

I rewrote some internal stuff. Especially Widgets need less memory now so refresh should stop less often because of low memory. Also a crash in for gif loading is fixed.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.13

I missed some things when changing important internal stuff and caused some crashes. Sorry for that. Hope I got everything working now ... on my old phone now a lot more widgets work which also means reload should have more memory available in normal cases.

I hope to add some explanations to the faq for the regexp find/replace I added earlier because that is really great in combination with the 'Image search' advanced setting to speed up load times for a lot of picture galleries ... I changed it for flickr and added lolpix already.
[Android Apps and Games] zAm1987:
Damn this is a really great idea. This app has a lot of potential!

I've got an own webspace, so I could write an extra page just for my wallpaper on the phone. The only problem is, that i really don't have an idea (yet!) for what I should use this. I'm sure there are a lot of awesome things, but right nothing entered my head. Any cool ideas? :D
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Problem is it uses too many things not working on all phones ... especially the webview in a wallpaper is great but causing some problems.

For ideas - try something easy first: What I am using is a website which combines some info from different websites into one page for my background. A webcam, weather info, rain radar ...

But I am no great javascript/css programmer as you can see from my tutorial clock - maybe you want to improve that and make it work also correct in widgets?
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.16 runs around a crash in android on some devices

Finally I should have found that nasty bug on some devices which caused android to crash internally in the image lib (and thus my app) when streaming an image from the web (no crash when loaded from sdcard). Picture loading is now changed and working for these devices.

Also the wallpaper is visible again where it was black since version .12 or so.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.4.19

Still no idea why settings freeze on fresh installed (?) users devices as written in the market comments. Not happening on my HTC Magic, Flytouch2 tablet and Nook Color.

More loading fixes for bugs I made with my last changes ...

Some fixes for gif (out of memory) problems and refresh.

I got only 1 person sending logfiles this week, 3 persons emailing me, 7 new crashreports from google but more than 10 1-star-ratings ... no problems for the other nearly 20000 active users??? Then please help me get the rating up a bit again :)
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.6

This version comes with a new widget 4x2 size and finally the promised selectable background color.

I have added reddit gallery (EarthPorn - great nature pictures, suitable for everyone) to show you how to setup reddit pics, seabreeze weather for Sydney as an example for a great 4x2 weather widget! And the very nice high resolution and refresh rate Antwerpen, Belgium harbour webcam ...

Regarding the freezes: I get no more crash reports from google after version 0.97.4.18 so possibly for a lot of users everything is ok now again. But still bad ratings are coming in.

I myself had some freezes (application did not respond shows up after some time) when switching fast between quickselections on my tablet so I will be able to investigate there.

Unable to change widget settings? After the wallpaper/app/widget crashed it is possible the connection to the widget is lost. As the wallpaper is automatically restarted it is possible you didn't even notice the crash. After 30 minutes or a restart the connection will be reestablished. I will find a solution later.
[Android Apps and Games] luca992:
I an having a problem with the widget that started probably 3 weeks ago. For some reason the picture only refreshes sporadically a couple times a day. And when I click to do it manually it never works.

It worked perfectly before so idk what's up.
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
I've also noticed the wallpaper occasionally not updating, but it's possible it's caused by a connection issue rather than this app.

You could do what I do, use xplanet to create an hourly global view centered around my local region, with the latest cloud map.

Incidentally, anyone have a server I can run xplanet on as a cron job?
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Hi luca,

do you have the same problem with the wallpaper? How many widgets have you active? Did you notice crashes of the wallpaper (that can cause the app to forget it's widgets for 30 minutes).

Is it depending on a specific url?

Have you tried deleting the widget and creating new?

Is it possible for you to send me a logfile and/or the url with your settings if it depends on that?

Michael
[Android Apps and Games] luca992:
I haven't used the live wallpaper in probably 2 months but it used to work fine. I could test it tomorrow if you want me too once the cam I look at starts updating. The cam is cam.warmwinds.com/camera_history/surfing.jpg (add http)... I think widget stopped updating normally around an update or two after you gave an option for manual refresh of the widget. Right now the other widgets I have are pulse, plume, beautiful widgets, extended controls, and power amp.

I'm pretty sure the only time a new picture will load is when I restart my launcher (go launcher also have tried stock motorola dx launcher). Nothing else I can do will make it update.....sometimes will randomly update idk y a couple times a day.

I haven't had any problems with widgets crashing either.

If you post a link of what the log is or something, I could get you one.

Hopefully not too many mistakes on this post wrote this on my dx.
[Android Apps and Games] luca992:
Live wall paper works perfectly
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.6.6

Fixes two crashes reported only by one person so far (gif, index) and do no longer stop refresh totally when app takes more than 16MB ram.

Also sets reddit as an example fast refreshing slide show static gallery (see all the settings :)

Hi luca, thanks for your help!

Log can be saved/mailed with an app like "aLogCat" ... weblivewallpaper posts a lot of information into the log. I suspect out of memory errors as I am quite sure I am still loosing memory somewhere since the big changes.
[Android Apps and Games] luca992:
ok I emailed you a log.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.7

No new functionality at this version - only fixes/changes.

The normal picture stuff should work even better now.

Lowers memory consumption of widgets and the refresh process. Also the app is allowed to drop bitmaps when memory is low - so it is possible refreshes will be missing until enough memory is free. Still web views of complex pages (and animated gifs) consume a lot and I can not control that.

In this version I did two hacks trying to fix ANRs some people have when the settings (do not) open. I delayed some loading there and hope that helps. I did not yet fix the ANR (I think on some motorola phones) when settings are opened while a website is still refreshing.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.7.1

Sorry, for Android 1.5-2.01 the app and widgets were broken. I did not notice until now. Repaired with this update!
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
Good work as usual, miha. Still yet to have a major issue with the app. Previous issue I mentioned was a server side problem in the end, not a problem of the app.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.7.3 hopefully fixes Android 1.5

And I really hope all the bad ratings came from there ...
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
Quick question: is there a way to show a slideshow of images from a specific folder on your phone? For example, say I have images in a folder called "wallpaper", I would like to show images from there, and both from other places on my phone (as the "show camera photos" seems to do).
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
Late answer :)

After selecting 'camera photos' quickselection you can replace the 'DCIM' in the 'advanced settings' 'match image path' setting with your wallpaper path if the images in there are registered with android gallery (default).

I will look into directly using wildcards for the 'URL' which already can be something like file:///sdcard/mywallpapers/0.jpg later ...
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
I see, thanks for the reply.

I realize that local images isn't really this apps forte, but perhaps a dedicated option (or, as you say, being able to set a folder path as a 'URL') would be a nice feature to add in.

ETA: Ok, I've been playing with the search filter you mentioned. Not being very good at regex, it took me a while to get it going. Now the 'my camera' actually shows only images from my camera. Before it showed all images on my phone, and would sometimes stop updating and/or go red background on me. I think this is because my phone uses IMAG1234.jpg for its camera photos. The regex I used was .*IMAG.* My question is, can you use this to search for images in a folder, or only by image filename?

ETA2: Nevermind, my regex apparently doesn't work. It's weird, it gives me mostly images taken by the camera, but occasionally gives me other photos on the phone. Help!
[Android Apps and Games] Dungeon47:
Has anyone gotten http://wallbase.cc/random to work? I just get a red screen.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
version 0.97.8 accepts local folders directly as source

I changed URL to Source. Format is not userfriendly but now local folders can be entered directly without the need for (working or not) media content regexp.

file:///sdcard/MYWALLPAPERFOLDER/

should show you all the pictures in this folder (no fancy file explorer for now!).

http://wallbase.cc/random/ is working for me in a quick first try - will include it in the next update (Dungeon47 if it is not working for you is it possible you send me a logfile? Or is the missing final / I added to your URL causing the problem?). Settings I used (slow, can be optimized with regexp/replace):

No gif, Dig deeper, No link images, Static Gallery 100 (not really needed but faster load with fast refresh)
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
The app still seems to have a major problem I do not know of.

When I look at the market ratings the distribution is really weird and different from all my other apps:

5* 199

4* 87

3* 35

2* 20

1* 78

A lot of people really like this but also a lot really hate it. Why? I got no more new crash reports* for weeks now. If you read this and gave/want to give 1* please tell me why and give some info - most certainly if it is a bug totally destroying the experience I can fix it easily after I know what!

* except a few old ones inside webview which is inside Android or problems with dialogs from websites
[Android Apps and Games] Dungeon47:
Thanks for the response. I'll try your settings and let you know how it goes. My current ROM has logcat disabled, but I may turn it on to diagnose this. More when I have it.

Update: It worked that time. I'm not sure which it was; probably the extra / at the end., but I had also recently wiped app data. I put the URL in as you posted with your settings and it worked right away. Thanks a lot!
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
Wow, thanks for the fast update! This is good enough for me, at any rate.

The whole reason I was after a local folder option is, where I work, half the day I lose cell signal. So, to be able to still have a beautifully changing wallpaper, I can switch to a local folder until signal returns.

Thanks again!
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
I didn't have time to check wallbase.cc with the debugger yet but it is also not working for me today. I will investigate this ...
[Android Apps and Games] luapb:
file type

Hi,

First off, great app.

I was wondering what kind of files are needed? I was trying to add this page bom[dot]gov[dot]au/products/IDR664[dot]loop[dot]shtml to see what would happen but it didn't work. Its basically a weather radar for my area that loops through about 5 .png images that show around the last half an hour weather. Can you tell me if it would work or do i need to do anything extra to get it working?

I'm using the nat geo photo of the day url and using wifi only refresh and I've also noticed that even when i have daily refresh checked it seems to be condtantly refreshing/downloading images. It also seems to be using the url images[dot]nationalgeographic***** etc. Perhaps these are other image links within the photo of the day wensite? One thing that may be causing it is that where i am sitting, the wifi is poor so it may be dropping out and reconnecting regularly. Does your app refresh everytime it connects to wifi? It's not a major problem as it's only wifi data.

Thanks again for a great app.
[Android Apps and Games] _miha_:
The weather radar site is using a script for the images so it is not working well (at least without the setting 'web snapshot' disabled - which then shows all the interface stuff too). Two 'maps' and a rain image are composed there so the app cannot find the resulting image. So at the moment only 'Website snapshot' mode is showing the image but that is not what you want. I will think about adding an option to combine images but that will not be soon.

You are right that every time wifi connection is established a refresh is done - but only if the given refresh time has already passed. Daily refresh should then not be triggered unless the image is still from last day as the app cannot know when the site will update the daily image. I will investigate if I can reproduce that.
[Android Apps and Games] luapb:
Hi,

Thanks for your reply. No need to worry about adding that. I had a look around the weather site and found a static image that is refreshed every 15 minutes or so. I then created my own web page that pulls out only the static image and i link your app to that. Works like a charm. Now i have the latest weather radar for my area as my wallpaper.

Champion.

Thanks again and great app. I've got so many choices now, i don't know what to use as my wallpaper. AHHHH!!!!
[Android Apps and Games] Rangelus:
I've been having some trouble lately with certain sites. In particular, APOD and reddit's /r/EarthPorn. Often, the download will hang at about 50%, and then restart. Sometimes, it happens with a red screen (i.e. no image already selected), and sometimes it happens when changing to a new picture. If there is already a picture, sometimes two images will be put together, and when scrolling between home screens the two images will flicker back and forth between the two.

It could be a problem with my device (HTC Desire running Froyo), but I thought I'd mention it.
[Android Apps and Games] saggitas:
Jalopnik's Ridiculously Cool Wallpaper URL

Yes! An app where I can finally auto-download whatever image from the web, to be set as my Honeycomb tablet wallpaper! Thank you so much =)

This is just Day 1 of me using the app, so apologies first. Anyone out there can help with getting the correct URL for Jalopnik's Ridiculously Cool Wallpaper images? I've set it to the main cache folder (minus the year and month), so I'm not sure if it will really download the daily images.