Yet another offering that does not work from this crowd :-(

I am on Windows XP SP3 (fully patched) and when I open any example I get the standard windows error "Animated Screen Saver has encountered a problem and needs to close".

Hold on a minute - YES that reads Animated Screensaver Maker. Not only that it IS the exact same problem as the real "Animated Screen Saver" program that was offered here a while back.

Can the developer please help out here because there is obviously an underlying problem with both of these products.

GW  –  14 years ago  –  War dieser Kommentar hilfreich? Ja | Nein (+38)

Übersetzen

Hello,
Animated Wallpaper Maker works here very well but only when there are some shortcut icons on the desktop...
It crashes as soon as I start the program when no icons are on the desktop. My problem is that I do not keep any icons there on the desktop...
Other than this, the program is easy to use and works great with the included graphics effects. (IMHO., I was able to create a piece of art with a couple of photographs and this program)
Thanks !
Animated Wallpaper Maker 2.5.0 is working fine on Windows Vista Ultimate 64x SP2

Hector  –  14 years ago  –  War dieser Kommentar hilfreich? Ja | Nein (+12)

Übersetzen

This is very similar to the Animated Screensaver Maker that was the giveaway on 3 October.
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/animated-screensaver-maker/

Most of my comments there are applicable here too so I'll repeat them with minor adaptations to save you the trouble of going to the comment (#12) on the old page.


Although the software is basically nice I have several reservations.

1. Every time you start the program my firewall pops up telling me x:\Program Files\Common Files\Thraex Software\AutoUpdator\AutoUpdator.exe wants to contact the internet, which I obviously disallow. There is no option to disable this behaviour as is customary in well-behaved software. I, for the moment, had to rename the file in order to get rid of that. I prefer that over having my firewall blocking it by default just in case I would start it while having my firewall temporarily disabled. I very much dislike such behaviour in software and I know I'm not the only one. It would probably have no detrimental effect on the software's functioning to delete this directory with that file.

2. At start-up it always maximises itself and it doesn't 'remember' its last exit size/location as it should.

3. The Add Animation window is annoyingly small causing the need to use a scroll bar when I have a huge screen that would allow a much bigger dialog window which would allow me to select an animation without having to use a scroll bar. I don't understand why developers don't understand this should be done differently.

4. For saving the wallpaper it would be nice to be able to set a user-definable default path which you should be able to define in some options window. I mean... really... no 'Options' or 'Settings' window?

5. While viewing the wallpaper in the software itself with its window maximised and the image being fairly large there is a hardly noticeable CPU use but when previewing the wallpaper or it being the wallpaper CPU use is significant. The increase seems disproportionate. The app's process "Editor.exe" seems much more efficient than the animated wallpaper's process "Wallpaper Manager.exe".

6. Last time with the screensaver version I wanted to use the "Import image" option to add an image of the moon that I wanted to drift slowly across the sky. Unfortunately I didn't seem to be able to set a fixed level where the motion should occur resulting in the moon crawling over the foreground objects in the bottom of the screen or wherever it likes. I suggested this option should be added. Apparently it hasn't been added so far.

7. I also suggested it would be nice if you could constrain certain animations to certain areas of the screen. Also that a few more animations would be nice. Butterflies and hopping and pecking birds for instance. For such birds an area constraint would be necessary. The current animations seem to be the same as the screensaver maker. I expect both apps use the same underlying engine.

So... again: Nice... but still with ample room for improvement.

Ben  –  14 years ago  –  War dieser Kommentar hilfreich? Ja | Nein (+12)

Übersetzen

Works fine on Vista Home 64 bit. But, now I can't move my desktop icons. I was going to drag the setup & activate icon to the trash bin, and couldn't. Had to right click & delete instead.

Nancy P  –  14 years ago  –  War dieser Kommentar hilfreich? Ja | Nein (+10)

Übersetzen

To GW, The program runs fine on three of my systems, a Win XP Pro with SP3 32 bit, a Vista Home Premium 64 bit and Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. It's probably the way you have your system set up, or maybe you are running another program that conflicts with today's giveaway. I would contact the developer directly (even though the read me states no support, some of the developers are actually quite good at trying to solve the problem.

Heavy Water  –  14 years ago  –  War dieser Kommentar hilfreich? Ja | Nein (+10)

Übersetzen