Forgive yet another gnome newbie question 
(I was a KDE user since SUSE9 but after going to SUSE11.x and KDE4 (which I didn’t really care for), I decided to give GNOME a try and I’m loving it). So I knew how to do all this stuff in KDE but am having to hunt a little in GNOME.
First, the screensaver behavior question. I’ve found two places to configure a screensaver. I can go to “Personal Settings Configure Desktop” and, under the general tab, choose desktop and then screensaver. It gives me two options: blank screen and random.
I can go to More Applications and under the utility section go into screensaver. From there, I can choose random or one of about 100 different screensavers.
The only way I can get my screensaver to operate is to enable the screensaver in both places. If I disable it in either place, it fails to start. Is this normal?
Now the wallpaper slideshow question. If I right-click on the desktop and go into “change desktop background”, Under the background tab, I can choose slideshows made up of some pre-loaded pics. These slideshows are stored in /usr/share/backgrounds. Each slideshow has a corresponding folder with a bunch of pictures and a corresponding XML file that looks like it controls the slideshow. Is there any type of application or interface to create these slideshows using custom pics without having to manually create this XML file. With enough time, I could decode the XML file but it would seem there would be an easier way.
Thanks for your help!