QuickSlideshow version history

Changes in version 2.0

1. The ability to create thumbnail files was added. Thumbnails are files with a small copy of selected pictures in them. Pictures can be added to, or deleted from, thumbnail files with ease. You can drag with the mouse to move or copy thumbnails, including to other thumbnail windows. Thumbnails can be used to start a slideshow.
2. The program was renamed from "GIF Slideshow" to "QuickSlideshow" to reflect the fact that it now processes many different file formats, not just GIF pictures.

Changes in version 1.5

1. You can now print the current picture, by selecting "Print" from the File menu, or pressing Command-P. Various printing options, such as alignment on the page, expansion of small pictures, shrinking of large pictures can be controlled by the "Printing options" dialog box, found under the Options menu.
2. Added recognition of Targa (.TGA) files.
3. If your monitor is set to more than 256 colours (i.e. thousands or millions of colours) then QuickSlideshow no longer clears the screen to black between each picture, thus eliminating a slight flicker between frames. It is still necessary to clear the screen to black if the monitor is set to 256 colours or less, in order to avoid colour changes occurring to the picture as the palette changes.
4. Fixed a problem where if you scanned a folder by dropping the folder onto the QuickSlideshow icon (in the Finder), and no pictures were found, that certain menu items (such as Open) were subsequently disabled.
5. Fixed a problem where the "splash screen" which normally appears each time the program is started briefly flickers onto the screen if you have not used QuickSlideshow before, to be replaced by the "Welcome" help screen.
6. Changed the check for monitors with 256 colours to be for 256 colours or more. (If your monitor is set to less than 256 colours you will be warned on program startup that you will not view pictures optimally. This warning can be disabled by changing the program preferences.)
7. Two new "help" screens were added - a screen describing the printing options, and the "version history" of the program was moved from the "general help" screen to its own "version history" screen.
8. Fixed a problem where PICT files were not being drawn properly because the background was not cleared to white before displaying them.

Changes in version 1.4

1. Added recognition of the TIFF file type: CMYK colour
2. When processing TIFF files, can now recognise the "horizontal predictor" tag, which is used by some programs (such as Adobe Photoshop (tm)) when writing out compressed TIFF files
3. Fixed a bug where TIFF files with "IBM" byte orders where not processed correctly
4. Added support for BMP pictures (a popular graphics format used by Microsoft Windows (tm)). BMP pictures can be written back to disk as TIFF format.
5. When scanning disks or folders for pictures, aliases (under System 7) are now resolved. In other words, you create a folder containing aliases to pictures you would like to view. Then, by dropping the icon for the folder onto the icon for QuickSlideshow, it will resolve the aliases and display the appropriate pictures.
6. You can now go *backwards* through a picture sequence by pressing the keys: Command/Left-arrow. Similarly, you can use Command/Right-arrow to go forwards.
7. You can now disable the "read-ahead" option (which reads the next picture while the current one is being displayed). This is principally for users who want to go backwards through pictures. Reading ahead the next picture forwards will not increase the speed of viewing pictures when you are going backwards.
8. You can now disable the "loading first picture/loading second picture" display.
9. Some CDROM drivers appear to add ";1" to file names on DOS disks, others don't. This can result in "File not found" errors when processing a tag file created under a different CDROM driver. To work around this problem, if QuickSlideshow gets a "File not found" error when opening a file, it adds/removes ";1" from the name, as appropriate, and tries again.
10. Added a "splash screen" shown during program startup to thank users who have paid their ShareWare fees. This screen does not slow down operation of the program, as it is removed when either: a) There is something to do, such as displaying pictures; or b) 30 seconds elapses; whichever comes sooner.
11. Fixed a bug where QuickSlideshow could not read a TIFF file that it had just created.
12. Corrected a number of bugs relating to converting GIF pictures which were not 256 colours to TIFF files.

Changes in version 1.3

1. Now handles Paintbrush PCX/PCC files. This is a very popular file format on MSDOS systems. The addition of this capability was inspired by the discovery of the CDROM: "The Mother of All Clip Art" produced by Velvet Software, Conneticut, containing over 20,000 PCX pictures. PCX/PCC file types supported include monochrome, indexed colour and RGB colour.
2. Can now read "RGB" TIFF files. Previous versions only supported grey-scale and indexed colour.
3. Can now write PCX files in TIFF format.
4. Can now write MacPaint files in TIFF format.
5. Added an option to allow the program to automatically switch your monitor to 256 colours.
6. Added a "folder" pop-up menu to the "Find picture by name" dialog box. This allows you to see the folder names that pictures were in when your disk/CDROM was scanned. This typically allows you to jump to a "category" of pictures (e.g. FISH, LANDSCAPES) by selecting the appropriate folder name.
7. Added a "file name" pop-up menu to the "Find picture by name" dialog box. This allows you to see the names of each picture in the current "folder" that the picture you are currently viewing is in.
8. When searching for a picture by name in the "Find picture by name" dialog box a "progress bar" is now displayed so you can see how fast the search is proceeding. The progress bar dialog box includes a "cancel" button so you can cancel a lengthy search if desired.
9. Fixed a problem where if the "volume name" on a CDROM was null (binary zeroes), that volume could not be found when processing a tag file. A different method of scanning for mounted volumes has corrected this.
10. Writing tag files is now faster, as the code which determines the name of the current folder and current volume name has been optimised.
11. A problem with some pictures being scaled incorrectly (were too wide) has been fixed.
12. Files of type "BINA" as well as "TEXT" are now scanned for.
13. Fixed a problem with recognising "comments" in certain types of GIF89a files.
14. When using the "Open" selection from the "File" menu, only files which QuickSlideshow thinks are GIF/TIFF (etc.) pictures, or tag files, will be shown in the "open" dialog box. Previously any text files would have appeared here, even though they were not picture files.
15. Fixed a problem where holding down a "modifier" key (Shift, Command or Option) would not correctly pause the display during automatic advance if the "delay between pictures" was set to zero seconds.

Changes in version 1.2

1. Opening a "tag" file is now about 7 times as fast as in version 1.1, due to various efficiency improvements. For example, the "GIFS Galore" CDROM tag file now opens in 14 seconds compared to 1 minute and 40 seconds in version 1.1.
2. If you have spent more than 15 seconds scanning a disk or CDROM for pictures, and have not chosen to save the current picture sequence as a tag file, you are now prompted to do so when stopping the slide show. This is for the benefit of users who may have found creating tag files confusing, or for those who simply forget to do so.
3. Alert boxes that have "Yes" or "No" buttons now permit you to type "Y" or "N" on the keyboard to accept those alternatives.
4. A "welcome" screen is automatically displayed the first time the program is run.
5. The ability to search for pictures by name (or partial name) has been added (see section: Finding a picture by name or number for more details).
6. Some TIFF files are now supported, specifically: greyscale and palette colour, which have either no compression, LZW compression or PackBits compression. Further TIFF support will be added in future releases. In particular, QuickSlideshow can now read TIFF files created by it using the "save GIF picture as ..." menu option.
7. Attempts have been made to improve Autodesk Animator animations, although there is still room for improvement. If possible, ".FLI" files are read into memory in their entirety, and then processed from memory. This can improve animation speed. Also, errors in animation files no longer required a program abort.
8. Documentation has been moved from separate word processor files to online help screens. Users that prefer printed documentation can copy the help screens and paste them into a blank word processor document, and then print them.
9. Whether or not the menu bar is hidden during picture displays is now an option (Command-M to toggle it). If the menu bar is visible it will crop (hide) the portion of the picture it covers.
10. QuickSlideshow can now operate in the background, providing an impressive (if somewhat memory intensive!) backdrop of changing backgrounds to your other applications. We suggest you set the delay between frame advances to a high figure (say 30 seconds or more) or your other applications will be frequently interrupted by QuickSlideshow as it decodes each new picture. If you need to access your desktop, click on the picture to bring QuickSlideshow to the front, and then select "Hide picture" (Command-H).
11. You can now optionally show pictures larger than the screen at full size, and use the mouse or keyboard to scroll around and see the various parts of the picture (option-drag with the mouse to scroll, or use the arrow keys on the keyboard).
12. Various "memory leak" problems fixed - previously stopping one picture sequence and starting another did not release memory used by the first sequence.
13. Various "preferences" and "information" options moved from the menu bar to dialog boxes. This makes the menus less cluttered, allows more logical command-key equivalences, and makes it easier to see what the current preferences are. Press Comand-J to see slideshow preferences, Command-K to see general preferences, Command-I to control what information is displayed at the bottom of each picture, and Command-U to see what file types will be processed when scanning folders and volumes.
14. An option to "fix black pixels" was added in an attempt to correct pictures which were incorrectly saved with erroneous palette entries for some colours.
15. The "QuickSlideshow prefs" file is now saved in the System/Preferences folder rather than the folder containing QuickSlideshow.
16. An option to open an individual picture was added (Command-O).
17. Looping, and automatic advance, is disabled if only one picture is being viewed.
18. Various frequently-used actions (such as switching between manual and automatic advance) have been added to the "function keys" available on extended keyboards (for example, F5 switches to manual advance). Unlike most of the other command-key equivalents which "toggle" actions, most of the function key actions are not toggles, which means you do not have to remember the current program state before changing it.
19. An ability to dither pictures which are scaled has been added. This can particularly improve pictures which are shrunk to less than 100% (because the original is larger than the screen). Dithered pictures tend to not have vertical and horizontal lines through them. However dithering can be quite slow, and is recommended to be turned off, unless you either: a) don't mind waiting; or b) have a very fast Mac.
20. The program options "automatic advance", "loop" and "random" have been placed into an "options" dialog box (accessible from the Options menu, or by pressing Command-J), in addition to appearing under the Slideshow menu. Some users may find looking at this dialog box easier than using the mouse to pull down the Slideshow menu, particularly when in the middle of viewing pictures.
21. When going to a picture by name or number, it is no longer necessary to wait while the program displays the next picture (the one it had already read ahead to save time). When changing the picture sequence like this, you now see the "loading first picture" window again, while the program repositions to the correct place in the picture sequence.
22. Recognition for MacPaint pictures, and PICT files was added.

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