Hi Jon,

recently the idea came into my mind that it would be nice to support a couple of specific image websites. An easy way to accomplish this is to provide a specific interface that allows images to be plugged in DF.

A very easy and tiny version would be (please remember that I don't know the DF code):



The query parameter could be easily changed to some Dictionary or specific Query type:



where Query holds a dictionary mapping Criterions to user-set values, e.g .

A Criterion would be something like: Group, User/Person, Keyword, Category, Search text (name and value type, e.g. String, Int32, Path, Double, some Enum-type etc.). For each of these Criterions the main interface can then display a form with the corresponding fields.

Sorry for being that explicit. I don't want to be arrogant in any way, I just think that SW developers sometimes can talk better in concrete implementation design language.

Just an idea of a wacky mind. :blank: What do you think about it?

Just to throw in my 2 cents, I think this is a fantastic idea, and I'd love to see it implemented.

As a further refinement, why not make the UI part of the plug-in architecture? That way, we wouldn't be limited in how images are selected to some "general" set of parameters. Each plug-in would have its own set of configuration settings, and UI to set them. All of the existing image providers could be reworked as plug-ins:

Existing Providers

• 1 Image
• Local Images (could possibly be combined with above)
• Flikr
• Vlad Studio

Possible new Providers

• Picasa/Google+
• Facebook
• Wallbase
• Other Wallpapers sites...
• Starfish (http://xstarfish.sourceforge.net/)
• xearth (http://hewgill.com/xearth/)
• Cosby (http://cosby.secretgeek.net/Home/Play)
• Some sort of plugin to generate tiled images based on a list of files/folders (http://www.displayfusion.com/Discussions/View/feature-request-tile-multiple-images-together/?ID=655029a5-2d3f-48de-b604-4748561a4749)

Basically, anything. My point is that it will be difficult to create a one size fits all API if you want it to be flexible, so why not make it as simple as possible?

How about an interface (IImageProvider?) that implements one method: GetImage(ImageProviderSettings settings) and a base settings class (ImageProviderSettings) that is serialized and persisted by Display Fusion. This settings class can be extended by each plugin (FlikrImageProviderSettings, VladStudioImageProviderSettings, CosbyImageProviderSettings, etc.) Also define a base class or interface that defines the UI. This should be a property on the plug-in interface, so that when Display Fusion enumerates all of the plug-ins, it has an easy way to load the UI for that provider.

I'm just thinking things through a little, trying to jump start the discussion if you will.

Thanks for reading.

Music to my ears

Sounds great. Does the "version after next" mean 3.6?