History of PictureGo!

The development of PictureGo! started in 1999. After I had bought my first digital camera, I wrote a program to watch my pictures in a slide show.
Being an enthusiastic programmer, I continued to develop the program and version 6.6 is the twenty-eight release, so far....

Version 2.0 - August 2002

A story about developing software, struggling and getting married.

The roots of PictureGo! go back to the summer of 1999. Having an internet girlfriend, I found the perfect excuse to afford the luxury of buying a digital camera. I must have sent her at least 500 pictures in the first couple of months. Whether it helped or not, the fact is that today I can call her my wife!

With a fast growing number of digital pictures on my computer, I felt the need to have a slide show program. Of course, there are a lot of programs available in this category. I myself, wanted something tailor made, a program that simply fulfilled my ideas.
Only a couple of months before that, I purchased a Windows programming package: Delphi 4.0.

I like programming; it is my daily work as well as my hobby.
In developing PictureGo!, I found the perfect combination of learning more on Delphi programming, while making something useful at the same time.

At first I called the program PictureShow! and by March of 2000, version 1.0 had been completed. It was very basic and there were still a lot of issues to work out. But, it met my personal needs; the only thing you had to do was open a folder and start the slide show. From the beginning on that has been the PictureGo! philosophy; start the program and Go!

In those days, I wasn’t even thinking of sharing this program with other people. That thought changed in time as I kept making improvements to the program. By the time I finished PictureShow version 1.3, I started to look around on the internet. I found out that PictureShow was a real common name for slide show programs. I changed the name to PictureGo! and baptized it: PictureGo! version 1.0.

It was made available through the internet in May 2000. Compared to PictureShow version 1.0, it had advanced quite a few steps. Being still quite simple, I expected the program to be useful to other people.

 Making your program available on the internet is one thing, making it noticed in that enormous ocean of information, is a whole different step. It was a struggle for a long period of time; signing up the web site to as many search engines all around the world, trying to get PictureGo! on so called start pages and so on.

Months went by and I still didn’t have a single registered user. The first one, after launching version 1.1 in September 2000, did come real unexpectedly. Actually, I had pretty much given up the idea that my program would be of any use to anyone else. It must have been my lucky month. My internet girlfriend, coming from the USA, had moved in with me and I got my first registered PictureGo! user.

Wow, I almost opened a bottle of Champagne! (I hope my wife forgives this comparison!). Only one week later, the second user registered. Then, a wall of silence… Version 1.2 was never made available; version 1.3 was launched in April 2001. It was the first version, that would allow users to put shows together themselves, without being limited to one folder and it’s subfolders. The ‘breakthrough’ (real big word in this respect) came a month later. I managed to get the web site mentioned on ‘plaatjes.pagina.nl’ (A Dutch start page). The number of hits on the web site increased dramatically. The summit so far came on August 5, 2001. On that day, 5 people registered PictureGo!

After the web site disappeared from this start page, the hits on the web site (and subsequently the number of users registering) decreased, but the program kept spreading. In April 2002, I received an email from Paragon Publishing (UK publisher) asking permission to put PictureGo! on their cover mounted CD. I agreed happily and was honored by their request. Humbly I asked for a copy of the particular magazine and CD. I suppose this was just a little too much to ask, since nothing of the kind was delivered to my mailbox. To the defense of Paragon Publishing, I must say that they have been the only ones to ask permission to publish the program; I found out, PictureGo! has appeared on more so-called ‘Essential Software’ CD-ROM’s, but without permission! However, the last couple of months, being an influence of Paragon I suppose, most registered users are of British origin.

The score so far? Some 6000 page hits and 140 registered users. Some 40% out of the Netherlands, the other 60% from places all over the world.

What does this make PictureGo!, a success or a failure? Let me put it this way; I am really glad PictureGo! does not have to pay the gas and electricity bills. Building and maintaining the program is and always will be a hobby, though I really find a lot of satisfaction knowing others appreciate it. That is the kick; after all, the program is not making me any money (okay, I’ll be honest, I would not mind making money on PictureGo!).

So, now, August 2002, we reached version 2.0. I could have named it version 1.5, but since the number and nature of changes are vast, version number 2.0 seemed really appropriate. Because of all the changes, this was the first time a PictureGo! test team was installed out of volunteering PictureGo! users. This turned out to be very valuable; a lot of problems were tackled before launching version 2.0. Special thanks in this respect go out to Pieter de Visser, Breda, the Netherlands and Tom McCuen, Long Island, NY, USA, as well as the other members that signed up to the test team. To illustrate some of the changes, this is how the current General options window looks (see image on the right):

Back to my earlier mentioned internet girlfriend (now my wife). Not only did she design the PictureGo! icon, but she is also my editor for the English language used throughout
the program and the web site.

So, what will be next?
Actually I have no idea, we’ll let the future take care of that.
Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, August 2002

Version 2.1 - January 2003

 
After version 2.0 was released, the first thing I did was to notify all the registered users. Since I changed the method of registration, also existing users had to re-register. About 10 out of the previously mentioned 140 users did, not too promising! I pretty much had to start counting registered users all over, major bummer!

So I started some promotion activities, looking for web sites and on line newsletters to get PictureGo! listed. The first I found was a Dutch newsletter called ‘de Digitale Revolutie’ (To the Dutch and Belgian readers: een echte aanrader!). This was an almost immediate success; as soon as the newsletter was released, it started raining registrations mainly from the Netherlands and Belgium.

It got even better when PictureGo! appeared on Completely Free Software. I was busy for hours generating registration codes and replying to emails. Ok, I might exaggerate a little here, but one day I had well over 70 users registering! By now there are about 400 registered users; what I consider to be a small success. What strikes me is that many people register the program without even trying it first! After all, the unregistered copy of the program is also fully functional.

In the mean time I started developing version 2.1. Inspired after seeing a slide show with sound, I decided that was a feature PictureGo! missed. On top of that I thought it would be cool to be able to add text labels overlaying the pictures in a slide show. Easier said then done, the text labels gave me a real headache. At first I made it possible to define only one text label for a specific picture, but after that had been programmed, I thought 5 text labels would be more interesting. It was a real challenge to get it all right: properly aligning the labels, resizing pictures and dealing with different screen sizes. I sure spent hours and hours, week after week before completing this, but it was great fun to work on it.

Already with the previous version, setting up a beta test team proved to be extremely useful. By now, it is my experience, that you’ll never hear a word again from 75% of the people signing up (sad, but true), but I was lucky to have one real motivated test user on the team. So, a big word of 'thanks' in this respect (again) goes out to Tom McCuen (Long Island, NY, USA). He provided me with a lot of valuable feedback and opened my eyes on a very important issue. Thank you Tom!

Also after extensive testing, most programs are not a 100% error free. And PictureGo! is not an exception. In this respect I partly depend on the willingness of users to report errors and to do it in a manner that’s useful to me. So please users: when you run into an bug, report it to me and when possible, send a screen shot along with it! Which brings me to the, now solved, XP-problem regarding Automatic Starting CD-ROM’s. 'Thanks' to the people that reported this error. I would never have found out about it myself using Windows ME.

So what will be next? I don’t know yet, I have some ideas, but nothing really concrete. If you have ideas yourself, or criticisms, please let me know. Also, if you know of web-sites or newsletters you think PictureGo! should be listed on, mail me. For version 2.1 I am aiming for a 1000 registered users, maybe too ambitious, but we’ll see. In the mean time: Have fun using PictureGo!

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, January 2003

Version 2.2 - July 2003

Yes, your suggestions are taken serious. Just before 2.1 was launched I received the suggestion to prevent the screen saver from taking over while running a slide show. It turned out to be an easy change, but it came to me too late to implement it in 2.1. Another suggestion that has been implemented in 2.2 is to feature the use of the keyboard to operate the slide show. Also the idea of using bookmarks, which is new in 2.2, was suggested to me. Apart from all of this, I had a couple of ideas myself. In particular, the maintenance and management of MyShow files have been improved (see image on the right). Of course there was a number of (minor) bugs existing in 2.1 to tackle. I think I mentioned enough about the importance of testing in the previous release notes.

When you install version 2.2 you will notice the procedure is now a regular 'state of the art' installation procedure. The credits for this go to Jordan Russell, author of Inno Setup (a very impressive freeware InstallMaker program).
This software even creates an Uninstall procedure! (Okay, of course nobody wishes to uninstall PictureGo! but still, it is nice :)

The bad news is I haven't made it to a 1000 registered users yet, I need about 250 more. But with an average of 3 to 4 registrations each day, it shouldn't take more than 3 months..... I guess my marketing skills could be better!
On the other hand, it is not getting any easier to get the program listed. For instance, I can only update the PictureGo! information on Cnet (which has always been a great source for people to find PictureGo!) for a fee of about $70. (I don't think so!). I sent Cnet an email complaining about this, but.....no reply! Another example is that I can still update the PictureGo! information on CFS (Completely Free Software), but the site itself is not free anymore. In order to search this site, you have to become a paying member first! (A little peculiar I would say).

PictureGo! users come from all over the world, from Australia to Alaska, but, until a month ago, I didn't have a single registration from our neighbour country Germany. This had been bugging me for a while, but despite earlier efforts, the number of registrations from Germany remained zero. Finally, I got PictureGo! listed on AgfaNet which got me at least 50 German users. And I think as a result of that, I had a request from a German magazine (C't) to publish PictureGo! on their CD-ROM in the fall of this year. Since they claim to have 400.000 readers, this might lead to quite a number of registrations. We'll see....

I would like to thank everyone that came to me with suggestions for this new version. Big 'Thanks' to Tom McCuen (Long Island, NY, USA) and Ian Wright (Greenwood Lake, NY, USA) for testing, important remarks and suggestions.
Now it is time for the holidays and leaving the further development of PictureGo! for a while.
Happy summer holidays!

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, July 2003

Version 2.3 - December 2003

Now, it is December 24, the day before Christmas. Already in November I wrote these Author's notes, but somewhere between a month ago and December 8 (the release date of 2.3), they simply walked away to whereever.... Hmmm.....so now I am trying to think of what I wrote before..

Okay, starting with some real good news, there are over a 1500 registered users now, so the figure more than doubled since the last release.

This mainly happened because PictureGo! was declared a so called 'web-site of the week' in at least 10 Dutch local newspapers this summer. This caused joy as well as trouble. Joy because it gave me at least 400 new users, trouble because the provider (Wanadoo.nl) blocked the web-site 2 days in a row for exceeding the maximum traffic regulations....well at least this was a new and exciting experience!

PictureGo! 2.3 might be titled the cosmetic version. Have a look at the image on the right and compare it to the one shown in the previous release notes and you will know what I mean. Similar changes have been carried out throughout the program.

 But there is more to this new version than only cosmetics. A nice new feature is the ability to put the displayed picture on your desktop. Furthermore, the use of toolbar icons has changed to make life easier, especially regarding MyShow features. And last but not least : a whole list of (minor) bugs have been solved to make this version of PictureGo! probably the most stable one since the beginning.

I have some plans for the next version but haven't decided on anything yet. First of all, I would like to exclude chosen folders to be selected as a subfolder. And on top of that, also to be able to exclude chosen folders from being shown in the browser window at all. This is a real personal wish, since after I installed some Oracle products, I am stuck with folders contaning over 80.000 files. It would save a lot of time to simply skip these folders when searching the whole C-drive for a specific picture. And maybe I will include the ability to play videos; since most modern digital cameras offer the recording of (small) videos, it might come in handy to have it all together in one tool.

In the mean time, please keep sending in remarks and suggestions; and even more important : bug reports.
Credits for testing again go to Tom McCuen(Long Island, NY, USA) and Ian Wright (Greenwood Lake, NY, USA). Thanks a lot guys!

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, December 2003

Version 3.0 - August 2004

A new main version number, a brand new web site and a new PictureGo! icon: PictureGo! 3.0 has been launched. And….I am proud of it!

Since I can not leave PictureGo! alone for a long time, I started programming by the end of January this year. Apart from implementing the ideas as mentioned in the previous notes, I made a lot of other changes, and often, one thing lead to another. One of the nicest changes is the feature of being able to right click in the browse window. Now you can perform all actions (and more…) that only used to be possible from a running slide show.

The other thing I am quite pleased with is the ability of excluding folders on various levels. It leaves the browse window manageable when all non-picture folders are simply excluded.

 These are only two of the new features available and while I started out with programming for version 2.4, after looking back at all the newly built functions, I decided PictureGo! deserved a new main version number. Well, by then I had been programming for at least 2 months.

After the nice part, it is time for the awful part: adjusting the help pages. It is never a thing I feel like doing, but absolutely inevitable when wanting to share the program with the rest of the world. It is a time consuming (three weeks of spare time at least), horrible job.... well at least for me!

At the same time I started to look for beta users. This turned out to be the usual disaster (people signing up but no feedback at all – there is enough complaining about it in previous release notes).

After finishing the help pages, I began (after numerous complaints by my oldest son who kept saying the PictureGo! web pages should look more professional), developing a new web-site. This is really a job for pros and though I am a professional software developer, that does not mean I am a professional web designer.
So I shopped around a little and borrowed some ideas – don’t we all?. The biggest issue was to get the main page right (that took me about a week), but after that it was pretty much a piece of cake of following the same pattern over and over. It looks nothing like the previous web-site and I must say, I am proud of the result.

Being in the mood to revamp everything, I wanted a new icon for PictureGo! Man oh man, even developing a new icon can be quite a headache! Simplicity is often the best way, so with respect for the design my wife made for the old icon, I took the filmstrip out of it, converted it to greyscale and put a large red ‘3’ over it. A very original design? Let’s say I was inspired by, for instance, Delphi 7 and/or Paint Shop Pro 8 where the version number also plays a major role in the icon. Talking about Delphi 7, I finally upgraded PictureGo! to this version. And more good news for people who do not hate the new look of XP themes which PictureGo! now supports.

Maybe you already took a look at the features page stating ‘PictureGo! is used around the world in over 50 countries. To tell you the honest truth, this was a wild guess because I had simply no idea. Let me tell you how I used to administer registered users. I would simply move the registration mail to a mail folder called PictureGo! registered users. Apart from that, I would add the email address of the user to a PictureGo! mail group, unless the particular user stated he or she did not want to receive any emails as a result of registering PictureGo!. This construction proved to be far from ideal at the release of version 2.3. When I tried to send an email to all registered users using the mentioned mail group, I got a denial in the form of ‘too many recipients’. It took me a couple of months to figure out how to split the one mail group into three parts to inform all users - definitely time to program a better solution!

I can certainly understand people saying ‘no further emails’. Spam is one of the nastiest side effects of the Internet and it will be for probable quite some time despite of the (at first sight) promising efforts Microsoft and others make. But, telling me not to send anymore emails, won’t make a bit of a difference, your email address will (as promised) not be given to anyone else. Registering PictureGo! means you will get as many as two emails a year notifying you whenever a new version is available.

With my new program, the only thing I have to do is copy the entire incoming email on the clipboard and start the new application. The user is automatically added to a database and the generated reply mail will contain all previous registered PictureGo! copies for this user (if any) with user numbers and registration codes as an extra service.
(Yep, you are right, this could be a fully automatic process, but hey, there should be some fun in it for me!)

We wandered off a little, the issue was my wild guess of PictureGo! being used around the world in over 50 countries. Well of course, the item country is a part of the new database. And after having to copy all approx. 1750 emails (talking about horrible, adjusting help pages is not so bad after all) I found out that I was not too far off. It is actually 62 countries, of course there is more information derived from this database. Click here to have a look at the result. (August 2010: this link is no longer available.) This information is updated on a daily basis.

Ok, so now we are as far as PictureGo 3.0. I have been wondering myself, will there ever be a version 7.1 (for instance)? I started this project four years ago and will I be doing this over let’s say 10 years, in 2014? That is hard, if not impossible, to say. The computer world is developing so extremely fast and for an individual developer such as me, in the future it might be impossible to compete, even at a zero fee. But as long as people register PictureGo! on a daily basis, I guess I will continue.

Which brings me to the last subject: as of April 2004, I made it possible for users to make a donation for the further development of PictureGo! I would love to buy a program to make a professional help feature instead of the currently supplied HTML help pages. Another thing I would like is to make PictureGo! available through a site without download limitations (as turned out to be a problem, see previous release notes). These things are costly and will not happen unless you support me! So please consider making a donation!

Talk to you again around Christmas 2004!
Auke Nijholt (The Netherlands)

Version 3.1 - December 2004

The smallest version ever, that is one description that would fit version 3.1, it only contains one new feature : Crop and Enlarge. It is my belief that this is a one of the nicest changes in the history of PictureGo!

 I am the developer of PictureGo!, but I am also a user and this new feature has already given me a lot of pleasure.

 It only took me a little over a week to program and test it. During this period there was enough time left to adjust the help pages. For all the details, open Help and click on ‘What is new in PictureGo! 3.1’. Then, if you didn’t do so already, play with it and find so many details in your digital pictures that you never noticed before.

I am not claiming the invention of enlarging here, by no means. I do think however, that PictureGo! (being a slide show program) offers the quickest way to select a part of a picture to have a detailed look at.
Hmmm….that sounds pretty arrogant…..but so be it…

Okay, and what else is new? Not that much; the number of registered user grows each day by an average of 2. (Pretty pitiful isn’t it?) Despite my marketing efforts at the release of 3.0, I must have sent about 50 emails to (on-line) magazines/web-sites all over the world, it did not make a bit of difference. Then again, there is also a little success to report; PictureGo! was finally accepted at Tucows.com (after 2 previous failed attempts). I see this as a recognition since Tucows really takes a close look at the product and it requires a certain score to get your program accepted.

PictureGo! was rated "3 cows" which makes me a small software farmer. It is the lowest score you can get, but still.
A major advantage of being accepted at Tucows (which stands for The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software, b.t.w.) is not only that the software is listed, it is also hosted.
Which means I redirected the download link at the PictureGo! site to the Tucows site.
Of course there is also a disadvantage, I am ready to launch 3.1 just before Christmas but it takes Tucows some 2 months to review the new version (unless you're willing to pay lots of money) and hopefully accept it. So for the time being, I will have to change the download link back to my own homepage, and if you have read previous release notes you know which problems can arise there.

Till the next (10th!) version of PictureGo!

Auke Nijholt (The Netherlands)

Version 3.2 - April 2005

5 years, 10 versions, 2.500 registrations; the history of PictureGo! in a nutshell.
A nice series of figures. Certainly 5 years ago I absolutely could not have foreseen this.

Today, April 10 2005 , PictureGo! 3.2 was launched.
Though more involved than version 3.1, it still can be characterized as a small version. I mostly concentrated on improving ‘Automatic Starting CD’. So far it was only possible to have PictureGo! play one slide show of an Automatic Starting CD. Now you can put an unlimited number of slide shows on a CD, that is: space permitting. These shows will appear in an easy drop down menu for the user to choose from.

The key feature, maximum ease for the receiver of the CD, is a 100% maintained. Other new features are (smaller changes left aside) : copy a text label to all other pictures in a MyShow file, in case you want to have the same text appear for all the pictures in your show; the search function has been extended and, not unimportant, an improved version of memory management has been reintroduced (because of remarks of a critical user – thanks Valter!).

The experienced PictureGo! user knows that 2 new versions a year are launched, one in the summer and one around Christmas. That is how it has been for the last couple of years. The reason for the early launch of 3.2 (originally planned for July), lies in the fact that I started programming on 3.3 almost immediately after finishing 3.2. In fact, 3.3 is already in the beta stadium. I didn’t want to have two new versions stored on the shelf. Version 3.3 will be launched somewhere in August, you can already have a look at its contents at: http://home.wanadoo.nl/anijholt/Version33/NewInVersion.htm (Page was removed at the launch of version 3.3). So, for now, have a great summer!

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands , April 2005

P.S.
About the previous release notes:
Updating software only takes Tucows about 2 weeks and not 2 months like I stated. Therefore, I decided that as of this version, I will wait for Tucows to publish the new version before sending mails around to all users. This saves a lot ‘exceeding the maximum traffic web-site regulations’ agony!

Version 3.3 - August 2005

Yet another new version, PictureGo! 3.3. In April I wrote that this version had already entered the beta stadium.

 At the time this was true, but a lot has happened since. Actually, since then, PictureGo! went through major surgery; the software regarding controlling the slide show has been completely rewritten. And with reason; you might have noticed that a running slide show would use a 100% of the cpu resources even if it was paused. I had been aware of this for some time but I kept putting off solving it. For two reasons: 1) it is more interesting to develop new functionality and 2) it is kind of scary to replace a part of the program that on itself is working fine. Now it has been done and I am glad so, even it is took me a couple of weeks of programming.

Another major change (and almost as invisible), lies in the displaying of pictures in a slide show in full screen mode. With pictures growing in size, the time frame in between loading pictures during which a black screen would be shown grew accordingly. In this new version, the picture displayed will be shown until the next picture’s loading has been completed.

Also the Copy Show/Make automatic starting CD-ROM has been completely rewritten. These three changes, which might seem small, hold at least 50% of the programming and testing effort of version 3.3.

But, there is also some new, and very interesting functionality. For instance: the mailing feature for mailing individual pictures, folders or even complete MyShow files. Not to mention the ‘downsizing picture size on the fly´ feature that comes with it.
Then there is the enhanced Crop and Enlarge feature which now offers maximum flexibility in selecting an area and storing the result from within PictureGo! Of course there is more and all in all, it makes PictureGo! 3.3 a big version, and considering the important changes more or less under the hood, a version with quite a quality impulse.

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands , August 2005

Version 4.0 - January 2006

PictureGo! 4.0. What is there to tell?

 One thing is that PictureGo! did a little growing up. You could tell that PictureGo! was originally developed on a 15 inch screen set to a resolution of 800x600. Back then, the PictureGo! browse window covered quite some space on the screen. But as monitors grew bigger and subsequently resolutions got higher, PictureGo! got smaller and smaller, that is: relatively speaking.

 Another thing is that PictureGo! was originally designed to only do slide shows from folders. The MyShow part came later in April 2002, two years after the release of PictureGo! 1.0. It was always kind of obvious that the MyShow part had been pasted on to the original browse window. Those two things, the size and the design of the window mark this new version 4.0.

 The minimum size of the PictureGo! window is now 800x600 which is still a popular resolution. And I think it is safe to say that people looking at a display of 640x480 have almost become extinct. On larger screen resolutions the PictureGo! windows can be maximized (to full screen). The MyShow part is now fully integrated in the browse window. It takes equally as much space as the folder tree part and it is always visible. For that reason, MyShow got its own GO button. Users that do not use MyShow at all, can hide the MyShow part.

I decided to take another big step. I did away with the registration system. The main reason for this is that I thought it would be in the way of my main goal: to get PictureGo! to be a real popular slide show program. I guessed that the registration system, for some, was just enough to uninstall PictureGo!

Doing away with it, did mean I had to tackle two issues:
1) I still had the desire to know how much users were actually using the program, and 2) I still wanted the users to be notified whenever a new version would be released. I gave it some thought and the solution was pretty simple.
I finally had PictureGo! properly hosted (www.picturego.nl) with the advantage of having access to visitor log files. And I created a new program feature which allows users to automatically check for an updated/new version of PictureGo!.

 This was like killing two birds with one stone: as users check for an updated/new version, I’ll know someone is using the program by reading the visitors log file (solves issue 1) and by users checking themselves for an updated/new version, the need to notify users of new releases is gone (solves issue 2). I know the figure coming out of counting the number of users by reading the log files is not very precise.

 First of all, I am not forcing users to do the updated/new version check through the internet; in fact the whole feature can be simply turned off. Why? Because I hate it when programs make an internet connection without asking. I see that as disrespectful, I suppose I am a little old fashioned in this regard but I like my privacy and I just assume I am not the only one.
So, PictureGo! will always ask if it can access the internet. And your firewall will confirm this. What, you don’t have a firewall installed?
That is like having your front door open overnight! After I had installed mine (I am a satisfied user of the free version of ZoneAlarm),
I was amazed how many programs were trying to access the internet and lots of times for no apparent reason.
Wrong conclusion of course, the reason is apparent: gathering information. Nothing wrong with that on itself, but without permission: very wrong. Or would you allow people to come in to your house and look around without asking?

Getting back to the subject: reading the visitors log files does not give me the exact information. True, but it is good enough for me and since I love statistics and numbers I redeveloped the statistics program. The statistics page is updated every 30 minutes automatically (that goes a little far don’t you think?), so I have a constant access to the actual information. And so can you.

Okay, last subject (this story is getting long!) but it HAS to be mentioned! The Help pages. I did away with the HTML help pages and converted those to a proper Windows Help file. Let me tell you that was a hell of a job. But you know what is even worse? Having to proof read! After I had finished the new Help pages, I printed the whole lot and was shocked to see that it piled up to a stack of some 125 sheets of paper.
When my American wife Judy (she always does the proof reading) came downstairs and was told I had a surprise for her, she almost fainted. But she did that extremely boring job and for that she deserves a BIG compliment and a BIG kiss!

Since I know that few to no people ever read this page (visitor log files!), you might say I wrote this almost especially for you! You’re welcome!

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, January 2006

Version 4.1, 4.2 & 4.3 - December 2006

First of all, an apology for not keeping those notes up-to-date. Indeed, in between the versions 4.1 and 4.2 have been released, 4.3 will follow in about a month.

 I just have been too busy lately. Next to PictureGo!, so far the only application written by me available on the net, about 9 months ago I started a new project: PictureRetitle.

I have always found renaming pictures an important thing to do, but at the same time I considered it to be an awful job. Over the years I have been thinking about a solution and when I decided I had thought of the best solution possible, I started programming.

It was a hell of a (nice) job. The problem however is, to make your application visible to the rest of the world. I am still working on it and if you are interested take a look at: www.pictureretitle.com.

What can I say about the last two versions of PictureGo! and the one to come (4.3) ?
Let me take one highlight out: rotating pictures. For many years it was my wish to make this possible through PictureGo!
I found a perfect solution in using the command line option of another program (IrfanView - with the permission of author Irfan Skiljan).

This means that you can rotate pictures using PictureGo! under the restriction that also IrfanView has to be installed.
I don't consider that to be a disadvantage because: 1) IrfanView has a lot more to offer than rotating pictures, and 2) Why invent the wheel over and over?
I wish you all the best in 2007!

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, December 2006

Version 5.0 - May 2007

The fifth main version of PictureGo!

Another milestone after 7 years of developing: PictureGo! reached version 5.0. A new main version number thanks to the new feature Multiple slide show.

 Many slide show programs or picture viewers are able to show thumbnails in various sizes from a given selected folder. PictureGo takes it one step further. With Multiple slide show you can watch a slide show of 2 to 35 pictures at the same time.

 When developing this new feature, I myself had some doubts if this would be useful. Those doubts disappeared after seeing the result, it is not only useful, it is also great fun.

Multiple slide show requires for pictures not being very large in size. Simply because it takes quite some time to load 35 pictures of 3 Mb each. The program already has the solution of tackling this problem using Reduce Picture Size to create smaller versions of pictures of a certain folder. It does require a few steps to make this happen though. That is why I can already announce that in PictureGo! 5.1, there will be a one step solution to create a subfolder with smaller versions of the pictures of the parent folder.

A new main version called for a restyling of the web-site. Always more work than at first anticipated on. The last page I worked on is the Statistics page. Not only the style was changed to meet the new standard, also most of the (rather boring) tables are replaced by colorful graphics. Not very useful to you, the user of PictureGo!, but pleasant to look at.
For me, the most interesting fact of the statistics is that PictureGo! seems to be quite popular in Italy . Though Italy is not the country with the highest number of users (yet), already for over a year Italy has the fastest growing number of PicureGo! users. Rather astonishing realizing that PictureGo! only comes with an English interface.

Another but less pleasant fact is that the number of new users in 2007 has clearly decreased compared to the new users in 2006. One explanation is that in 2006 the old registration system was dropped so that certainly in the first half of the year, lots of old users showed up in the statistics. I have set my hopes on Multiple Slide Show for lots of new users to come aboard. The first signs are very encouraging. I am aiming for 5000 users by the end of the year.
Right after the summer holidays, I will start on programming version 5.1. This version can be expected by the end of summer.

Version 5.1 & 5.2 - April 2008

The lifecycle of a program.

Looking back in the Author’s notes from the last couple of years, I came across a question I asked myself in August 2004, almost 4 years ago:
Will there ever be a version 7.1 (for instance)? I started this project four years ago and will I be doing this over let’s say 10 years, in 2014? That is hard, if not impossible, to say. The computer world is developing so extremely fast and for an individual developer such as me, in the future it might be impossible to compete, even at a zero fee. But as long as people register PictureGo! on a daily basis, I guess I will continue.

 Right now we are at version 5.2 and there will be certainly a version 5.3, but after that? When you look at the User Statistics page, there is a clear decrease in new PictureGo! users. In 2006, on average 7.5 new users every day started using PictureGo! In 2007, this figure dropped to 5.2.

Now in April 2008 the number of new users per day dropped even further to an average of 4, and in the last month the figure is down to a little over 3 new users per day.
User feedback that was very common in the past has completely vanished.

What is the reason behind this drastic decrease?
Actually, exactly what I predicted in that same paragraph I wrote in 2004. Though Google’s Picasa looks great, I never was sold on it. When Vista came with the great Picture Galery features, I asked myself: why in the world would look anyone for a different solution to view their pictures.
I still say PictureGo! has its specific qualities and while this is still true (don’t argue), that is of no importance to the average user.

Do I consider this to be sad? Without hesitating, I can answer this with a firm NO. This is what it is. Like I said, for an individual developer there is no way to compete with Microsoft or Google unless you are extremely talented and in that case they will probably buy you. I was never made an offer :) Today I looked at Tucows popularity rating which is still at a remarkable 93%. This tell me that PictureGo! is not the only slide show program that faces a decrease of downloads.

Like I said, there will be a 5.3 version with some nice new features. From this point it is hard to say when the new version will be released. Probably somewhere in the fall.

What is there to say about 5.1 & 5.2?
5.1 was a real useful extension of 5.0 where Multiple Slide Show was introduced. Some of the rough edges were cut off and a user friendly solution to make smaller versions of pictures was introduced.

5.2 supports the uploading of pictures, to services like Flickr.
To end these notes, I think it is safe to say that there will never be a PictureGo! 6.0. But I must say: I greatly enjoyed it and it taught me a whole lot.

Thanks to all the people who supported PictureGo! in the past and in the future!
I wish you wonderful summer holidays.

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands , April 2008

Version 5.3 - June 2008

And here we are, barely June and the 5.3 release is launched. Months earlier than announced in the release notes above! And as I wrote before, 5.3 indeed does contains some nice features.

Audio player
Even when you have been a PictureGo! user for quite some time, chances are big that you never started PictureGo! as a stand-alone audio player.

Let's jump back a couple of versions.
The stand alone audio player was introduced in version... Hmmm.. let's see... it has never been mentioned in previous Author's notes... Okay, simply starting previous versions I can tell you it first appeared in version 4.1. In that same version the sound playlist was a new feature altogether.

Earlier, you could attach one sound file per picture in a MyShow file, as of 4.1 you could attach a sound playlist to a MyShow file (without a maximum of sound files) as long as the MyShow file contained at least one picture. While developing the new feature, I thought i would be worthwhile to add an Audio player to be able to play a sound playlist without having to play a slide show.

Do not think of visually very attractive players as the current Windows Media Player or numerous other spiffy players that can be found on the internet nowadays. No, just a list that could be put together with a couple of buttons to start, pause, skip etc. No searching on MP3 tags or connecting to the internet...just very, very basic. As if this was not bad enough: once PictureGo! was started as an audio player, the program could not be started for slide show purposes and vice versa.

The good news is:
The audio player is still as basic as it used to be.
PictureGo! can be run twice at the same time, once as a slide show program and once as an audio player.

The best news is:
Once you created nice sound playlists, you can start playing those directly from your desktop where a new shortcut will take you to all available PictureGo! sound playlists. No need to start PictureGo! first. And I'll assure you: that works very, very fast.

Without a doubt, other media players offer fantastic features to create sound playlists. The format of one of those (Windows Media Player) is supported by PictureGo!. Hence, create a fantastic sound playlist with Windows Media Player and play it with PictureGo!. Because, once the playlist is created, what more do you need than a couple of buttons to start, pause, skip etc.

Slide show from a MyShow file
Also a feature for quite some time that you might be unaware of: a right click on Windows Explorer gives you the option of instantly play a slide show of the selected folder. This concept is now also available for MyShow slide show files. Similar to the solution on sound playlists, you can start playing MyShow files directly from your desktop where a new shortcut will take you to all available PictureGo! MyShow files. On the fly, you can attach a sound playlist and change some basic settings. I would say, the quickest way to a slide show.

 I said it before but once again: I wish you wonderful summer holidays.

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands , June 2008

Remarkable development - September 2008

Though already expected for almost 2 years, it finally happened: Netherlands (PictureGo's home country and so far all time number 1) does no longer lead the user statistics. On September 9, Italy took over!

 Like stated before, it is pretty remarkable for a program that only comes with an English interface to have such a great number of users in Italy.

Therefore, thanks to all Italian users for putting there faith in PictureGo!

Another remarkable fact is that all of a sudden PictureGo! has been discovered in South America. Especially Uruguay and Mexico are responsible for growth figures not earlier to be seen. 2008 might well turn out to be PictureGo! best year ever.

Though not certain yet, PictureGo! 5.4 can be expected by the end of the year.

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, September 2008

Version 5.4 - February 2009

A South-American revolution!

For quite a while, reaching the threshold of 10.000 users (Champagne!), seemed quite impossible. Now, it is safe to say that this number will be reached in less than 2 months.

 Like cautiously announced in the previous 'in between' notes, 2008 easily turned out to be indeed PictureGo!'s best year with a total of 4,422 new users.

 And this is all because PictureGo! was 'discovered' in South-America. Uruguay took over the lead position that Italy had just taken in only a couple of months, Mexico will just need a week or three to exchange positions with Italy to be the new runner-up. The contrast with the home country of PictureGo!, the Netherlands, with 21 new users in the last 6 months could not be bigger!

Pictures on TV
Though I often think I have finished programming on PictureGo!, every now and then a new idea comes up. This time it was about showing pictures on the television set. I have my computer hooked up to the tv. In general, it is much more comfortable to watch internet content (mostly programs I missed watching on the regular networks), on the tv.

 Watching a slide show is a completely different story. Where movies etc. are perfectly converted to match the tv resolution, this is not the case with images. Even Windows Photo Gallery and Google's Picasa don't do the job.

 PictureGo!, with this new version, does! You are able to define a second monitor and adapt the output of the slide show to perfectly match the specifications of your television set.

 More than one camera?
Nowadays, many people own more that one digital camera. My wife and I, for instance, use 2 digital camera's simultaneously. Often, when watching pictures we argue about who took which picture. Not difficult to find out but annoying to have to stop the slide show for. In this new version, you can have the camera brand and model displayed in the picture title. Quite convenient is my experience.

Apart from this there are a couple of improvements regarding 'SmallPics', please read the 'What's new?' page in PictureGo!'s Help for more details.

I am pretty sure (no current new ideas) there will be no new version before the summer holidays. So have a good year, despite of the financial crisis. No matter what, as long as you can afford to have a computer, you will always be able to afford PictureGo!:)

 Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, February 2009

Pre-version 6.0 - June 2009

Was I depressed?? Did I think I was losing it? (see Release notes 5.1/5.2)

 It must have been something like that. Anyway, PictureGo! is alive and kicking. The reason for this revival is not only the growing number of users. The fact that I finally figured out how to handle the thumbnail issue, was a major breakthrough.

 Multiple slide show was introduced in version 5.0. The idea was to create smaller versions of your pictures in a subfolder and thus to be able to browse quickly through your pictures displaying up to 35 pictures at the same time.

Nice, but there were major drawbacks. The essential drawback: there was no relation whatsoever between the original and the smaller version of the picture. So, if you would rotate or edit the smaller version, the original would stay intact and vice versa. I kept thinking in the wrong direction. Instead of chaining the smaller version to the original, I did just the opposite. Watching a slide show of smaller version, would give the user the opportunity to right click on a picture and choose 'Show original from master folder'.

When I was thinking of new ideas (like I stated before, I can never leave PicureGo! alone for a long time), it finally dawned on me...And one by one, I tackled the arising issues.

This means (as of version 6.0):
The thumbnail issue will be handled fully automagically. (Sorry, I just love that non-existing word!) You never have to think about it again; the thumbnail will always be in sync with the original.
Whether you change/rotate a picture launching an edit program form within PictureGo! or at a time PictureGo! is not active at all, it doesn't matter. Further on, if you delete a picture, both the original and the thumbnail will be deleted.

 The term Multiple Slide Show will be replaced by Thumbnail view. You will simply have 2 buttons: start slide show in Full screen mode or in Thumbnail view. Essentially, you will not know when you are looking at a thumbnail or at a original (and that is the whole point). The subfolders the thumbnails are stored in, will be hidden. As well in PictureGo! as in other programs.

Which brings me to the next subject. Existing SmallPics folders can easily be converted to Thumbnail folders. After installing 6.0 you'll be notified.

The above was inspiring enough to think about other improvements and features. But, let's leave something to reveal when 6.0 is really released. Major bump in the road in this respect: the Help pages that have to be adjusted.

 The release date I am currently aiming for lies somewhere in the late fall. I might release a beta version later this summer. If you're interested, keep checking the site or send me a message through picturego@gmail.com to let me know you want to be notified of new developments.

Auke Nijholt, the Netherlands, June 2009 

Version 6.0 - October 2009

The nicest improvement of version 6.0 is, without a doubt, the handling of the thumbnail issue (see above). But apart from that a couple of other improvements worth mentioning were done.

The feature of zooming after cropping a picture is a good example. And secondly: the ratio crop. Until 6.0 there were 2 possibilities: Square crop or free crop. As from now you can crop a picture to whatever ratio suits you best. There are a lot of presets but on top of that you can define your own custom ratio. Convenient when you want to crop a picture to fit your monitor or your cell phone.

Auke Nijholt, October 2009

Version 6.1 - December 2009

The third version this year and the second in only 2 months.

Where version 2.3 was called the cosmetic version, 6.1 is nothing less than a complete makeover. All 39 PictureGo! windows were adapted to meet the new standard. Even more important: quite a few windows have been completely redesigned. I must admit that I always have more been focused on features than on design. Working my way through all the different windows, I started to realize that quite a few of them must be overwhelming for the average user. Though I am a professional IT developer, I am not a designer. I myself am very pleased with the result, you on the other hand might think differently. In both cases please let me know and hand me your suggestions.

Some 5 years ago (or even more), a user reported a serious problem to me. After starting PictureGo!, the program would show the message ‘Invalid drive ID’ and terminated instantly. I had no idea what was going on and of course, since I had never encountered the problem myself, it was impossible to reproduce the problem. The only guess I could come up with was that this user probably had a computer with a file system that PictureGo! was unable to handle.

Little did I know. It was not until 2 months ago that I faced the problem myself. We had new computers at work and immediately after installing PictureGo! the dreaded message ‘Invalid drive ID’ was right in my face. The good thing was that I could start solving the problem. It turned out that the (My) Pictures folder was located on a network drive and that is the folder that PictureGo! will try to open the first time the program runs. Since PictureGo! is not designed to directly work with network drives (a network location has to be mapped first before you can access it with PictureGo!), the program threw the message and terminated.

So the problem is solved. In the odd chance the (My) Pictures folder is located on a network drive, PictureGo! will temporarily map the drive to be able to open the folder. Not the nicest solution but at least it works. The user that originally reported the problem has probably already forgotten about PctureGo! Nevertheless, I am happy that after all these years I was finally able to solve this problem.
I sincerely wish you happy holidays and a happy New Year. Certainly for those of you who lost their jobs because of the crisis, let’s hope the economy speeds up to provide new opportunities.

Auke Nijholt, December 2009

Version 6.2 - August 2010

Nine months between 2 releases! What took me so long? I have been programming on PictureGo! bit by bit and every time I thought: "now it's time to release", some other idea came up.

Let's start with the last idea. Recently, I bought a new camera with GPS-feature. This means that, in theory, when you take a picture, the gps-coordinates are stored in the picture's exif-data. Since the gps-coordinates are only determined every five minutes there can be quite a difference between the actual location where you take a picture and the gps-info stored in that picture. But okay, I can see the added value.

Of course Picasa (developed by Google) has the feature to immediately show the location on Google Maps. Microsoft's Photo Gallery lacks that feature; of course they could or would never use Google Maps. I myself am not bothered by such sentiments. I wanted the feature in PictureGo! It turned out to be rather simple. Just launch the proper link to Google Maps with the GPS-coordinates as parameters.

I think it's fun. You can instantly switch to Street View and watch the surroundings of the place you shot the picture. I did have an interesting discussion with my wife though, as she claimed there were privacy issues involved. And she does have a point there: be careful who you share your pictures with containing GPS-info. You could, unwillingly, easily give away the exact location of where you live should you share pictures of your house, garden etc. To this respect, I made it possible in PictureGo! to exclude exif-data from pictures you share (in the process of reducing pictures sizes).

The other thing worth mentioning here is the changes made to the zoom feature. Now, the center of zooming is determined by the location of the mouse cursor and the speed of zooming depends on the speed you scroll the mouse wheel. Also, you can keep zooming even if the picture is going beyond the screen boundaries. And, holding the Control key down, you can pan the picture. (Thanks Valter for suggestions you made regarding zoom.)

The site has been renewned. The last site had been functioning for quite a few years and the picures on it were no longer up to date. This site, though very basic, is a little more user friendly, I must say especially for the one maintaining it (me!). A small example: Every year in January, I would change the copyright dates manually. From now on, this is handled automatically, as well as the release and release date are now both a variable part on the site. I only have to change it in one place to have the change reflected on every page.

Until the next version!

Auke Nijholt

Version 6.3 - December 2010

It is Christmas now, time to do some looking back. On December 10, version 6.3 was released. It sure sounds incredible to me but this is really the 25th version of PictureGo! Though I myself pretty much declared PictureGo! to be terminally ill sometime ago, the program is still alive and kicking.

Version 6.3 comes with nice new features. The nicest one in my belief is creating Windows 7 Desktop themes. And a thing I never believed of introducing is image transitions. Very modest at first since Fade out is the only available transition but there a many more to follow. I won't make it too exotic, after all, it is the picture that deserves the attention, not so much the transition.

Highlight of December: the number of 15.000 users was reached! In earlier release notes I mentioned the South-American revolution. The new number 1 country of PictureGo! users turned out to be Uruguay. After installing a new database of IP-adresses, it turned out that it was actually Brazil where the majority of new users came from. And it is kind of sad to see that Uruguay in the current statistics went back to one single user:)

In between, version 6.4 is on its way!

A wonderful 2011 to you and until the next version!

Auke Nijholt

Version 6.4 - February  2011

When you play a slide show in full screen, you have a lot of options available to you on how to control the slideshow, using crop, using zoom etc. The only thing though is, you have to know that those options exist. The way I tried to make users aware of it was by means of a mile long hints, also called tooltips. There were several disadvantages: like I said, the hints were way to long, allways in your way and I still couldn't get all the neccesary information in. The hints are replaced now by a panel on the left of the screen. You make the panel appear by pressing F1 or clicking the I-button on the toolbar. My advice would be to browse through the several tab pages of this new panel and find out things you never knew about. Do you know, for instance, that you can advance the slide show picture by picture just by scrolling the mouse wheel?

PictureGo! 1.0 would easely fit on a screen size of 640x480 pixels, in fact it was developed on a computer with a monitor of that size. As monitors were getting bigger, also PictureGo! started to consume more space. I never had given this much thought until I recently purchased a mini note book with a monitor of the size of 1024x600 pixels. Some PictureGo! windows simply wouldn't fit on it. I had to reconstruct some windows (especially the Search window needed modification) but the result is that now it also runs nice on mini notebooks/laptops.

The last thing to mention is the growing number of transition effects. The first effect was implemented in 6.3. Now there is a list from 8 effects to choose from. My favorite effect is Porthole. It looks good and I had to apply a little math (such a long time ago) to make it work.

Until version 6.5!

Auke Nijholt

Version 6.5 - August 2011

There is not that much to tell about this version. Only one functional change: Auto adjust.

When playing a slide show in thumbnail view, the number of pictures displayed on one page is determined by the corresponding setting.

When this number is set to, for instance, 77, thumbnail view will reserve 77 rectangles for images to display regardless of the number of pictures in the slide show.

This version comes with a new option Auto adjust. When the slide show actually contains only 35 pictures and the number of pictures displayed on one page is set to 77, still only 35 rectangles for images to display will be created. This way, as much space as possible is used to display the thumbnails.

After installing the version, Auto adjust is automatically activated. It can be turned off though, go to: Options->Thumbnails.

Apart from this functional change and a rather important bugfix there is one major change to the version.

When PictureGo! was developed 11 years ago, picture file names were not stored according the maximum length that Windows will allow. To make matters worse, in some cases this length was even reduced to create space for other information. As a result, a slide show could 'miss' certain pictures when playing a slide show.

In this version this problem is solved, almost every PictureGo! file including all MyShow files and Sound playlist files will be converted at start-up.

You might never have noticed problems in this regard. I myself am happy I finally decided to tackle this problem. Using PictureRetitle to rename my photos using rather long descriptions, I sometimes would run in to this problem. So finally I decided to deal with this major flaw. It is more fun to develop new features but sometimes it is better to bite the bullet: in this respect to write major conversion code.

Until version 6.6!

Auke Nijholt

Version 6.6 - December 2011

This version comes with improved text features. Apart from the existing 5 text labels, a text box can be attached to each single picture in a slide show.

The text box can contain up to 5 lines of text containing 100 characters of text per line. Each text line has its own font, font size and font color. Alignment can be set for each text line individually.

For the moment, new developments are put on hold.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Auke Nijholt

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