archetype - I think you are talking about the empty space above the landscape image in the screenshot. This space becomes useful when viewing a portrait image.

I am always frustrated with non-square digital photo frames, because one orientation always suffers. I prefer a square aspect ratio so both landscape and portrait photos can be displayed the same size.

Dexter1759 - I don't think anyone has mentioned that. but it is definitely on my list of improvements. As soon as I can figure out how to use tracker (the content management system with non-existant documentation) I will be putting this in.

I agree. Perhaps in 'Single-Photo' mode the borders could be sized based on the image. Not sure if this resizing the widget is simple or even possible.

hey fiferboy!
looking good

as for the blank borders - could you just make them 100% transparent?
that way, you get what you want, and people get what they do too.

it might involve centring the < > buttons too to make them not float on their own (but that was suggested anyway)

Here are some problems I found using the widget:

Photos taken by the N900 in portrait show in landscape in the widget. They show correctly in images so it must be an EXIF field.

It is too easy to miss the arrow buttons and trigger the loading of the pic viewer. Maybe a boundary bigger than the visible buttons?

It would be better if the picture viewer avoided the wallpaper images somehow. It would be even better if you could read the image list from Tracker and use that to generate picture lists (all images on the device, images tagged 'slideshow', etc)

Thanks, fiferboy. As always, your stuff is great.

Making the border 100% transparent would mean it would be very difficult to know where the edges of the widget are when lining everything up on the desktop. I will add opactiy in as an option at some point, though.

Centring the "forward" and "back" buttons vertically would mean they would be in the edge of every landscape photo. The way they are currently, if you have non-square photos they are more-or-less out of the way in both portrait and landscape photos. This could be an option too.

Qole - I will look into exif rotation flags. I want to add tag filtering in a future release, which I think would enable you to get rid of wallpapers. Unfortunately, the tag cloud library (libcumulus) doesn't have headers for development available at this point

Version 0.2-7 is now in extras-testing. This version adds three user selectable sizes (small, medium, large) so you can display photos at the size you want.

This version also fixes some bugs with single file selection, and the selection dialogs now remember the last directory.

Edit Screenshot shows all three sizes now available

Version 0.3-1 is now in extras-testing. This fixes the problem with portrait pictures from the internal camera being shown landscape.

Please, test this package then give it the thumbs-up!

Version 0.3-2 is now in extras-testing. This version implements the following:

EXIF-based photo rotation. As qole says, photos with the orientation tag set in EXIF will now show properly rotated in the widget.

UI Improvements. The frame is now transparent (everyone was right, it does look better). Slide show controls have been moved to the left/right centre, and now a press anywhere along the left/right edge of the widget will activate the control. The photo displays a little larger (because of border removal). Probably a couple other minor things.

Thank you fiferboy. Those small changes add up to a big improvement in the UI. Probably a good idea to always post a link to the extras-testing page for the release, to encourage voting.