I am very pleased to announce the release of DisplayFusion 3.0! This release represents the most significant changes DisplayFusion has ever seen, and some of the most exciting new features. It has been 1 year since I released DisplayFusion 2.0 back in February 2008, and a healthy community has grown up around DisplayFusion since then. I have had many people submitting suggestions and others offering to help with testing and translations. As a result, DisplayFusion 3.0 has been under heavy development and community testing for the last 3 months, with over 50 people actively testing in 9 languages on every version of Windows from Windows 2000 to Windows 7 and everything in between.
The single biggest new feature in DisplayFusion 3.0 is the addition of Multi-Monitor Taskbar support for DisplayFusion Pro users. This has been the most requested feature since DisplayFusion was released, and has also required the most amount of work to develop. Thanks to a significant amount of testing, the Multi-Monitor Taskbar support in DisplayFusion 3.0 is first-class and completely integrates with Windows. It uses the standard Windows Themes in Windows XP/Vista, and even works perfectly with hacked Windows XP themes that use a modified UxTheme.dll file. There are a variety of configuration options available for the Multi-Monitor Taskbar, allowing you to configure it exactly the way you want to.
One huge benefit from community involvement is the addition of more language translations. DisplayFusion 2.2 was originally released with 3 languages, but I happy to announce that DisplayFusion 3.0 now has 9 supported languages and is constantly growing. DisplayFusion 3.0 is being bundled with 4 languages (English, French, German and Spanish) with 5 more available for immediate download (Italian, Swedish, Simplified Chinese, Dutch and Portuguese).
When I released the first version of DisplayFusion with integrated Flickr support, I had every intention of adding more image providers at a later date. However, most wallpaper sites don’t provide an API like Flickr, and as a result integration just isn’t possible in most cases. During the development of DisplayFusion 3.0 I was approached by Vlad from the popular Vladstudio website. Vladstudio has arguably some of the best wallpapers available for download, and all of the standard resolution images are completely free. The new Vladstudio wallpaper integration is free for everyone to use and allows access to the entire Vladstudio collection. People with paid Vladstudio accounts will have access to higher quality multi-monitor wallpaper, but free users aren’t left out. Free users will have access to the same excellent images, just at a lower resolution.
DisplayFusion 3.0 has also received a complete interface overhaul. Every piece of the interface has been revised and streamlined to allow for easier use. For example, the Settings window has been divided up into more tabs for better separation of configuration options, while becoming easier to navigate at the same time.
The Wallpaper settings window has also undergone a transformation. With the addition of some excellent new image post-processing features (free for everyone to use) and the streamlining of the interface, it is now more powerful and easier to use than ever. You can do everything from applying a single image on one monitor to setting a random Vladstudio image to be spanned across all monitors. Everything has been simplified, but made more powerful at the same time.
There are a number of smaller, frequently requested changes in DisplayFusion 3.0 as well. For example, the addition of a HotKey to change to a new random wallpaper image (DisplayFusion Pro only). Moving windows between monitors has been made even easier now, thanks to the addition of the new middle-click window movement option. When enabled, just middle-click on a window’s caption bar and the window will be moved to the next monitor. Very easy, and much faster than dragging the window to the desired monitor. Of course, the old drag-and-drop window movement is still there, and has been enhanced to provide better application compatibility.
DisplayFusion 3.0 also introduces a special game detection feature. When a game is starting up DisplayFusion will suspend all background operations to free up maximum systems resources for your game. Once you exit the game, DisplayFusion will resume everything automatically without you having to touch anything.
As always in any big release there are dozens of bug fixes as well. DisplayFusion 3.0 includes some fixes that apply to wallpaper centering, mouse lag, HotKey bindings and much, much more.
I would encourage everyone to update to DisplayFusion 3.0 today. If you have the auto-update option enabled you will be prompted to update the next time you start DisplayFusion. If you don’t have auto-update enabled, just head over to the DisplayFusion page to download the new version. DisplayFusion Pro users don’t need to worry, your existing license will work with DisplayFusion 3.0 and all future DisplayFusion versions.
I would like to send out a big thank you to everyone who helped to make this release possible. From the people who submitted suggestions, to the people who helped translate and test, you all made this release possible.
Thanks everyone!
February 22nd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Rock on thanks for all the hard work!
David
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 am
Definitely a big thank you. I have tried a few other program yet have always come back to this one. Thanks for all the hard work.
~Nicoli
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I was so excited when I started up my laptop today and got the update notice for 3.0. Thanks for all the great work, keep it up!
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
An excellent program, glad to see you’re still supporting it! I swear, this thing is so simple and effective it makes managing displays on Vista x64 actually possible! Thanks again and keep it up!
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Thank you very much to all at Binary Fortress for all your hard work!
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Wow! Nice features, especially the Multi-taskbar. This application may be the most-satisfying software purchase I’ve ever made. Thank you!
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Thanks for the great feedback everyone!
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Wow… nice additions! I’m upgrading to the pro edition to reward all your hard work. Thanks again!
February 25th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Outstanding!
February 25th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Wowza! I use your program quite a lot (like everyday, duh) so I really appreciate the effort that has been put in this. Much much better and light than the default Nvidia desktop manager.
February 25th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I think you just put every “Taskbar Extender” program out of business.
Great work.
February 28th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Superb addition! Thanks Jon
March 3rd, 2009 at 4:41 pm
The fullscreen ‘throwing’ of the app. window seems broken when handling free graphic software ‘Paint.NET’ in this new version. Beyond that, thanks Jon for your continued development of one nifty bit of kit!
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:14 pm
@L.Rawlins: The Paint.Net issue has been fixed in v3.0.1 which should be released later this week. Thanks!
March 5th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
“DisplayFusion 3.0 also introduces a special game detection feature. When a game is starting up DisplayFusion will suspend all background operations to free up maximum systems resources for your game. Once you exit the game, DisplayFusion will resume everything automatically without you having to touch anything.”
What does this mean?
Only displayfusion “background operations” or other as well? I hope it’s off by default …
March 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
@tikont: I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “other as well”? DisplayFusion turns off the wallpaper changer, and some of the multi-monitor taskbar polling functions whenever a game is running. Once you exit the game it resumes these background activities.
March 8th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
This has got to be one of the best pieces of software that i have purchased.
Great to see multi taskbar has been integrated into it.
The only problem that i can see is that when the taskebar has been set to auto hide, the taskbar on the second monitor stays put.
Nothing that i can’t live with though, just a minor thing.
March 8th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
@Leica: Taskbar auto-hide is coming in a future version.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Cool, can’t wait, must be reaching perfection now then.
Thank you so much for all of your work that you put into this.
May 10th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Pls give me a reason…My Display Fuson program can’t get any wallpaper from flickr.com…it attend that can’t use search on that site???
May 11th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
@Jun: Do you use a proxy server? If so, you will need to set that up in the DisplayFusion settings.