The changes are listed with the most recent version shown first.

 
Version 5.4

• Added two great new bulbs: North Pole Express and Flight Lights.
• Added the ability to set a background color that appears behind a background picture.
• Fixed a rare problem that could cause the screen saver to display an incorrect JPEG image if you only use Holiday Lights in screen saver mode (and not in desktop bulbs mode).

 
Version 5.3.1

• Fixed a problem with the "Dreidle" and "Deck the Halls" songs (they played incorrectly on some MIDI sound cards, causing music to intermittently stop).
• Added support for playing Windows Media Audio (.wma) files. Holiday Lights now supports MIDI, MP3, WAV, AIFF, and WMA music files.
• Prevented the snowfall and leaves animation styles from building up so high that they cover background pictures.
• Minor cosmetic improvements in category creation and display.

 
Version 5.3

• Added a categories feature that allows you to assign your bulbs to categories (such as "Autumn" and "Halloween"), then later view your bulbs by category.
• Added different movement styles for screen saver animations.
• Added a new "Leaves" screen saver that uses the "Falling Leaves" movement style.
• Improvements to the snowfall animation to make it more realistic.

 
Version 5.2

• Support for playing MP3 files (and other audio formats supported by Windows Media Player) in the Music Box. This feature requires that DirectShow is installed on your computer (DirectShow is a part of DirectX 7 and later, and is automatically installed with Windows Media Player or Internet Explorer 5).

• The screen saver background pictures can now be JPEG or GIF formats, as well as BMP.

• New "Old Glory" bulb.

• Tell a Friend option added to Start menu and taskbar bulb menu.

• Changed the interface for loading and saving themes to prevent a common misunderstanding that resulted in people loading a saved theme when they were trying to save a new one.

• The payment reminder window has a Help button that explains how to enter the serial number or remove the trial version without purchasing it (which are the two most common questions people have upon seeing that window).

• Updated logo and animated graphics in Payment Reminder and About windows.

• Fixed problem where screen saver preview for Gingerbread Man and Singing Tree animation was incorrect.

• Fixed problem that could result in error messages appearing if Windows Explorer exits.

• Fixed problem that could result in multiple error messages appearing when one will do.

• Setting the bulbs to "Don't Flash" uses somewhat less processor power (it didn't use much before; now it uses the minimum possible).

• Fixed problem that could make the order form show you were using an older version of Windows than you actually are.

• Minor internal code speedups and reliability improvements to eliminate rare errors.

 
Version 5.1

• Support for themes. Arrange your bulbs, music and screen saver settings the way you like them, then click "Save As" in the theme area of the Settings window. Your settings are saved as a theme for later use.

• The music list is now completely controllable using only the keyboard.

• Four new songs were added.

• Uninstall now does a better job of cleaning all entries from the registry.

• Fixed a bug that prevent the Delete Picture option from working properly (it would always look like it deleted the picture, but didn't always do it).

• Worked around a bug in Windows that could cause the Preview Screen Saver button to launch the Fax Viewer application.

• MIDI sound cards are now initialized before playing each song. This should prevent "off key" problems on some sound cards.

• Various tweaks to the songs to improve the sound and prevent them from being cut off on some sound cards.

• Fixed a music bug that would cause the next song to stop half-way through if you clicked on a song name, let it play all the way through, then quickly clicked on another.

• The music list now redraws only when you've added a song (instead of every time you switch to another window and back).

• If the help files are missing, a message appears telling you to download and install the setup program (instead of showing a Windows Help error).

• If you're viewing a tab other than the Bulb Factory in the Settings window and you add a bulb you've downloaded, it switches to the Bulb Factory to display it.

• On some systems, the screen saver preview in the Display control panel wasn't updating properly after changing the settings. Fixed.

• Improved the bulb uploading system to allow better identification of bulb artwork authors.

• Many miscellaneous smaller improvements.

 
Version 5.0

• Bulbs can now be placed on top of all windows. See the "Bulb Drawing" section of the settings window Bulb Factory.

• Six new screen saver animation are included: Angel, Dancing Demon, Gingerbread Man, Santa, Singing Tree, and Skeleton.

• You can use any add-on bulb as a screen saver. Just download add-on bulbs from our site as always, then take a look at the bottom of the screen saver animation list!

• Five new songs have been added, and many of the existing songs have been tweaked to make them sound better on most modern sound cards.

• Holiday Lights now remembers as many pictures as you care to add to the screen saver background picture list, instead of just one picture.

• You can now tile or stretch the background picture.

• A couple of people with odd video drivers reported that add-on bulbs were upside-down. We tried to fix this, and hopefully it now works properly.

• The screen saver could cause a crash on Windows NT 4.0 when used with a screen saver password. Fixed.

• If you used a screen saver password on Windows 95 or 98, the animation would stop when you moved the mouse. Fixed.

• Fixed a bug that caused the wrong bulb to be edited if you used the keyboard up and down arrows, then pressed "Edit Bulb".

• Holiday Lights didn't display properly if you had more than one monitor. Fixed.

• You can now "Add" bulbs that are already in the bulb files folder; Holiday Lights will notice this and not try to make a copy of them.

• The setup program is now smarter about upgrading: if you have an existing copy of Holiday Lights on your computer in a weird directory, Holiday Lights will notice and upgrade that copy.

• Holiday Lights will now install a copy of the screen saver file in your Windows System directory if it's missing when you press "Preview Screen Saver". This allows the screen saver to work even if you copy the program from one computer to another without using the setup program (although we still recommend that you always use the latest version of the setup program when copying Holiday Lights to a new computer).

• We changed the way the installer works so that it doesn't display error messages if there's an incorrect version of CTL3D32.DLL in your Windows directory.