Xymantix Online

Wallpaper XChange

I wrote a program years ago to better manage wallpapers. Even though Windows allows you browse for and select other images to use as wallpaper, there was still a lot missing from the whole experience. To address these shortcomings, I rewrote the old program from scratch to make a wallpaper changer that works the way that I want it to. Given the current state of technologies such as GDI Plus and advanced controls, this incarnation of the wallpaper changer is light years ahead of its predacessor. It has a host of useful features, including:

It allows you to set .bmp, .gif, .jpg, and .png images files as wallpaper

It has a graphical image browser to help select a particular file, with customizable image sizes

It offers a list view of image files and allows you to sort by name, size, date, or resolution

It color codes the image resolutions to easily identify those with the same ratio as your screen

It has a preview area complete with monitor effects such as inner shadows and a glare

It has an optional caching system to make loading directories lightning quick

It allows you to easily delete/copy/rename files, and supports drag and drop

It offers high quality bicubic interpolation to resample images to your screen resolution

It has an image viewer mode that shows the picture in its own window, resizable to zoom in/out

It's resizable so make the directory browser and preview area large or small

Wallpaper XChange doesn't modify or replace any of your source images. Instead, it will make a copy of any image and use that copy for the wallpaper. It can optionally keep thumbnail-sized cached copies of images to speed up directory previews, but these are kept in a separate cache directory underneath the program directory so that it won't interfere with your image directories.

A screenshot of Wallpaper XChange

Preview section showing a sortable listview of the image files instead of thumbnails


Preview section showing large thumbnail images	Preview section showing small thumbnail images


A preview of the wallpaper on the monitor without any additional effects applied	The same wallpaper preview, but this time with inner shadows and a glare alpha-blended over the composite image to add to the depth and realism.


Image subsection when Windows resizes a 1600x1200 image to fit my 1280x1024 screen for a wallpaper - look at how jagged the lines are!	The same subsection after Wallpaper XChange's bicubic interpolation resampling - no jaggies!

Screenshot of the image viewer which is resizeable to zoom in and out. Holding down the SHIFT key while resizing ensures that the zoom will be done maintaining the image's original proportions.

Download Wallpaper XChange
	Wallpaper XChange	Version 0.3 released 04/24/05.