DesktopX 2.4 Developer’s Guide
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4.4 AniUtil with Optimization for making animations
AniUtil is a little utility distributed with DesktopX that let you attach single frames into one
"animated" image. It supports bitmaps and PNG. One option is Optimization. It will basically
analyze and cut image borders that are not used by any frame. This is very important, for
instance, when rendering from applications like 3DStudio, where setting as output the minimum
image size is either very difficult or impossible. AniUtil will take care of optimizing the final
animation making sure the least memory is used.
As advanced option you can even set Tolerance a bit greater than 0, to make sure "dirty" pixels
as result of the rendering don't cause the image size to stay big.
4.5 32 bit image formats
For performance reasons, DesktopX internally always uses 32 bit images. That means RGB and
a dedicated Alpha channel. So, even if you make 8 or 16 bit images, DesktopX will convert them
to 32 bit (and therefore increasing longer load time!). The only apparent benefit of using lower
bits images is to save disk space. However, nowadays PNG can provide a great compression
level, and the exported DX objects and themes are compressed anyway. So, the suggestion is to
always use 32 bit images as BMP, TGA and PNG, for best quality.
4.6 Screen resolution adaptation before distributing your objects
In the Relation configuration panel of Object Properties are options to control the reposition of
objects on changing screen resolution and on loading objects on different screen resolutions. It is
suggested that you experiment changing your screen size and see how objects behave before
distributing them.
Also, when using scripts, you should always use the VScreenX properties, not the ScreenX ones.
This is because virtual coordinates support multi-monitor setups.
4.7 JPG wallpapers
When possible, you should use JPG wallpapers in your DesktopX themes. If their compression
level is correctly tuned, they can preserve the original quality at a unnoticeable level, but will use
a lot less disk space, thus making the themes a lot smaller and let them use less bandwidth.
Note that DesktopX will internally convert them to Bitmaps, so that will seamlessly work on all
versions of Windows without the need of enabling Active Desktop.
