Explorer Thumbnail viewer

[Karim]

Hi Soquili & Meia,

I thought that Meia was replying to YourMum:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by YourMum:
Can I just say that I think the new explorer thumbnail viewer that comes with X1 is completely fantastic...
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

There's an option in Win98 onwards to display files as thumbnails, so that files that support this (mainly jpegs & gifs) can be browsed without opening an editing app. Xara hasn't supported this for ages, but I understand from the web site that Xara X1 now does support it. I think that is what YourMum's post was referring to.

On the same topic, can any Xara X1 owner tell me whether their OS support also extends to Windows XP's funky larger image preview mode (select Filmstrip from the View menu in Explorer while browsing a photos folder)?

[Karim]

Ooh, another question - does anyone know how far the new thumbnail support extends? Can it do thumbnails/previews for Xara 1.x & Xara 2?

[YourMum]

I don't have any older .xar files than ones created with X1 to try this on, so I don't know. Sorry.

Here's a little (possibly useful?) registry tweak though:
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Explorer and create a DWORD value called "ThumbnailSize" and then set its value to change the size of the thumbnails you see in the Explorer. Xar files will not scale up beyond about 125 pixels wide/high, but will scale down happily.

YourMum

[Karim]

Aaahhh, thanks YourMum - lots of thumbnail goodness! btw, just did a quick test & XP's default is 94x94, unaffected by screen-res (but maybe by DPI - someone else can check this http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif )

Karim

ps for anyone scratching their head, I'm running Xara X with a custom .xar thumb viewer - I'm not asking pointless q's, honest http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

For anyone running XX or older on WinXP/2K, Jonathan Payne wrote and released a similar thumbnail viewer a while back on these forums.

[YourMum]

Just to confirm, the thumbnail viewer shipped with X1 works with Xara X .xar files.

YourMum

[Jonathan Payne]

Did I hear my name?

In case you are interested, my old Xara thumbnail viewer is available here (and I have the source somewhere if any one needs it).

Jonathan

[-=Drifter=-]

i just found another viewer that includes .xar files:

http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.html

[-=Drifter=-]

oops, i just did a search in here (AFTER THE FACT OF POSTING THIS) for XnView and found it has already been noted
not only that but i had already responded to that post
yikers - i'm losing it


sorry for the redundancy

[amoore]

I wish it would not revert back to file, maybe next version they will allow that option.

So long as it's an option and not standard behavior. I never use File|Open in the standalone XPE because it's stuck on thumbnails, so it takes me forever to navigate to files. It's just way too frustrating. AAMOF, the thumbnails have pretty much killed my use of standalone XPE.

Another problem with thumbnail view is that file names have to be short to be accessible. For example, right now, I'm doing a project that involves cleaning up a number of photos and then placing them in a collage in Xara. Because I use a combination of apps to process the photos and each photo has multiple versions, the file names have to carry enough info to clearly identify the iterations. In thumbnail view, most of the file names related to a given photo are truncated, so there's no way to tell which is which. Plus, the thumbnails are usually too small to show the differences between one iteration of a photo and another.

The thumbnails are great for skimming at a high level when I'm doing a photo project like this one and I can display them in a large external window such as my file manager or XnView or xtvd.

In the File|Open dialog, thumbnails are a disaster. It's like trying to navigate through a keyhole.

[tonylondon]

i just found another viewer that includes .xar files:

http://perso.orange.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.html

Thanks! That's definitely worth investigating. And the converter too,

Tony