WindowBlinds: Manage Your Desktop Wallpaper

Walkthrough of WindowBlinds Wallpaper Features

Monday, April 16, 2007 by Island Dog | Discussion: WindowBlinds

I recently wrote about the ability of WindowBlinds to change the color of your visual styles, so this week I wanted to touch on another cool feature of WindowBlinds which is the built-in wallpaper changer.  If you are like me, then you probably have a large gallery of wallpapers on your hard drive.  Organizing them isn't always easy, and finding them and adding them to your desktop can be just as tedious. 

Fortunately, WindowBlinds has some features that can help you with managing your wallpaper collection.  In this article I am using WindowBlinds 5.5 to demonstrate these features.  In your WindowBlinds configuration window select "Change my wallpaper" from the menu on the left side. 

You can simply browse through the thumbnails, and when you want to apply a wallpaper, just double-click the preview and your wallpaper will be applied to the desktop. 

There are two options near the bottom right on the configuration window just above the thumbnail previews.  The first one will change the wallpaper between the larger preview and a gallery view.  The second image (tools icon) is the wallpaper settings option.  From that screen you can add/remove folders that include wallpapers, and select/deselect those folders from viewing as well.  Simply click "add folder" and browse to the folder that contains your wallpaper collections and they will be added for viewing in WindowBlinds. You can also set the wallpaper options such as tiled, centered, stretch, or smart mode from there.

Now that your wallpaper collections are set up, click "Changer" to configure your wallpapers to change based on certain settings.  You can set WindowBlinds to change your wallpaper on Monday mornings, every morning, at every logon, or every hour.  These are optional settings and you can set it to never change your wallpaper with those settings.  You can also set these to only use the wallpapers of your choice, or apply it to them all if you like.

Now a quick note for people who don't want WindowBlinds to apply wallpaper that is included with a theme they are using.  In the WindowBlinds configuration select "Override default settings", and make sure the setting "Apply the wallpaper included with a skin" is unchecked.

I made a short video to go along with this tutorial.  It shows how easy it is to manage your desktop wallpapers and goes through the features described in this guide.



Video: WindowBlinds: Manage Your Desktop Wallpaper
KingSky
Reply #1 Thursday, April 19, 2007 12:16 AM
How do you use this feature to apply wallpaper to multiple monitors?
Philly0381
Reply #2 Thursday, April 19, 2007 2:15 AM
Okay a real basic question about the video, I play it but get no audio. What must I do to correct this?   

I set up my desktop this morning using the wallpaper changer and downloaded a screeshot, of course you can't see the wallpaper changing. I didn't even try to explain how it worked.   

What are the chances of an option that lets you set the time interval for the wallpaper change?   
Bebi Bulma
Reply #3 Thursday, April 19, 2007 3:30 AM
There is no audio Philly.
Philly0381
Reply #4 Thursday, April 19, 2007 10:22 AM
Never mind!!  
kcrlshell
Reply #5 Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:10 AM
Hmmm, I've been using a program called WebShots for many years to manage wallpaper. This does just about the same thing. I wonder if I might be able to save a little memory by using this? Do you know if running the wallpaper changer in Windowblinds adds to the memory "load" Windowblinds uses?

Also, in the Wallpaper "mode", most are self explanatory, but just what does "smart mode" do?
jfp3
Reply #6 Saturday, April 21, 2007 10:15 AM
Yeah I have all my windows sounds settings functioning fine, but no sound from the tutorial.
Philly0381
Reply #7 Saturday, April 21, 2007 10:20 AM
See reply #3   
pgp_protector
Reply #8 Wednesday, April 25, 2007 3:44 PM
cool, I'll have to set this up
ReeJoJen
Reply #9 Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:41 AM
a new problem with the window blinds changer... computer boots up and it looks like it changed the wallpaper ..... but then it goes right back to the one I had the day before.I have the changer set up to change each time I logon to my computers. This is not an isolated incident... it hapens on my laptop and deskstops...Any suggestions????
Island Dog
Reply #10 Tuesday, June 12, 2007 8:25 AM
Make sure you don't have "use wallpaper included with skin" checked in the default settings.


ReeJoJen
Reply #11 Tuesday, June 12, 2007 1:24 PM
I rechecked and I do not have use wallpaper inclueded with skin checked.
Stan57
Reply #12 Saturday, July 14, 2007 2:17 AM
I have the same problem, i have my setting to change every hour but it doesnt work at all. It only changes if i log on or reboot. This has been a long running bug that should have been fixed by now

Island Dog
Reply #13 Saturday, July 14, 2007 8:46 AM
Please submit a suppot ticket to support@stardock.com with your WindowBlinds configuration info.

 
lipkiss
Reply #14 Monday, August 11, 2008 6:54 AM
I have a diff problem everything is fine just that everytime i logon i get the wallpaper in center when i need it to be stretched though it is on the smart mode.I've been using this changer for quite some time but since i have switched to 6.xx version im facing this problem.Any solution?

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