Wallpaper

Last updated October 29, 2005

Like many people, I make use of Windows' ability to display arbitrary graphics as a background for the desktop. I've collected images I like from a number of sources (mostly other web sites). As my collection grew, I decided that it would be ideal to have the picture updated automatically, and so naturally I wrote a program to do just that.

"WallPics" will cycle through all of the images in a specified directory (optionally including subdirectories), setting each one as the Windows wallpaper. It can do this at a fixed period, or each time it's run, or only the first time it's run each day. It will convert from a number of popular formats (not GIF and not those TIFF images which use LZW compression - I'm not going to pay Unisys) and will scale or tile the image as appropriate.

While there are a number of programs available to perform this function, I wanted the image to update only once each day, the first time the system boots. I haven't found another program which does exactly that.

The following pages are a thumbnail index of the graphics which I have WallPics cycle through. (Click on a thumbnail to view the full size image.) The small ones are intended to be tiled, which WallPics can do automatically. I have also made all of these available in a single archive, though it's probably just as effective to browse the index.. Since most of these images are JPEGs the archive achieves very little compression, and consequently it's 65MB.

Index pages of my favorite Wallpaper graphics

[HTTP] Get all these graphics in one archive (388 files, 75MB!)

Index pages of graphics I no longer use

[HTTP] These graphics in one archive (165 files, only 17MB!)

[HTTP] Get my WallPics program (3MB)