Vista thumbnail previews (as icons)

[Marin85]

I have noticed that K-lite codec pack (full without the included player) can create thumbnail previews under Vista for the most video file extensions, which is definitely a nice feature. Also, I found out that Office 2007 is also able to save its documents together with thumbnails of them which appear instead of the usual icons. To make things more colorful I also found out that Acrobat 9 (both free and pro) are able to create thumbnail previews of pdf files if one manages to access those files somehow from within an internet browser (e.g. saving a pdf in a folder among other pdfs "creates" thumbnails of those pdfs). Is there any general way to create pdf thumbnails without having to access the given folder from within a browser? Is there any general way to create thumbnail previews of all "previewable" files under Vista instead of the usual boring icons?...

Thanks

Marin

[Marin85]

Bump, c'mon guys and gals, Windows 7 is not really that cool and interesting to play with and it´s still in (pre-)beta shape, don´t abandon the Vista subforum

[jdhurst]

I don't know because I use a very, very classic interface and don't use icon previews at all. ... JDH

[Marin85]

JDH, have you disabled thumbnail previews somehow? If so, how? (AFAIK, just setting the UI to classic won´t disable them, at least that´s what I learnt from Server 2008). BTW, Google seems to yield some topics related to the pdf thumbnail previews, but nothing really substantial

[GomJabbar]

I am not in Vista at the moment to check, but in XP anyway, you can open Explorer (not IE), highlight a folder, click View > Thumbnails to view files in that folder as Thumbnails.

[Marin85]

It´s similar in Vista (although unlike XP Vista has some bug being not really able to remember the folder view settings...). But when I set them to thumbnails, most of them look just like enlarged icons (like in XP). AFAIK, unlike XP Vista supports thumbnail previews which basically are previews say of the first page of a "previewable" document but at the same time come in place of the regular boring icons, so each pdf or word document or movie file looks unique It´s all about that Vista´s vanity that I like so much

[jdhurst]

I went through Windows Explorer and changed everything into lists and details. In the General Tab, for example, I unchecked Previews. There were other things I kept doing. Two things emerged:

1. Windows Explorer in Vista would not retain settings. I opened case number SRX1073221093 with Microsoft and they supplied a folder reset registry patch that I wound up applying twice and now there are no previews at all.

2. More importantly, I found and paid for xPlorer2 that works better than Windows Explorer in all but a couple of minor points, so I use it 98% of the time. It is very classic in its appearance. It has a true document preview mode that is interesting, but again, after some time, I turned it off.

... JDH

[Stargate199]

Vista can only create thumbnail views for certain files. Others can be created by the programs themselves. If you can't get a thumbnail view, you probably won't be able to get it to work

[Marin85]

Vista can only create thumbnail views for certain files. Others can be created by the programs themselves. If you can't get a thumbnail view, you probably won't be able to get it to work.

Exactly. I´m referring to those thumbnail previews created by different programs like Word, K-lite codec pack or Acrobat 9. However, AFAIK these programs are not able to create that kind of thumbnail previews under XP, that means this feature is also specific to Vista (precisely, an interaction between Vista and a program that has the feature to create thumbnail previews of files (under Vista) ). Hence I was wondering if it is possible to "force" Vista to create thumbnail previews for all files I have a program installed for and the feature "thumbnail preview" would make any sense (in a wider sense). But I guess this feature is strongly specific to each program and there are probably no way to "force" Vista doing it...

The only other thing bothering me is the way Acrobat 9 creates thumbnail previews under Vista (with the access from the browser and so on I described above). I googled for that, but unfortunately I came up with nothing. There should be a way for Acrobat 9 to create thumbnail previews "offline" and in a much simpler way (like the other programs do that under Vista).

@JDHurst: Thanks for the clarification! I was interested in applying this fix from M$ because of Vistas inability to retain folder view settings (which is in fact very disturbing if you have to deal with plenty of documents of different types like me...), but now when you mentioned that thumbnail previews are not anymore possible under that fix, I guess I´ll wait for Win 7. At least in the beta this problem seems to be fixed.
BTW, I know that program xPlorer^2, it´s quite cool and has this nice feature to preview files (well, not exactly what I was looking for, but still nice...), which I have only seen under OpenSuse with KDE UI. I´m not aware of any other windows explorer complement or substitute that is capable of that (though it´s preview function is a little bit slower than that in OpenSuse ). It can actually preview any kind of files, if there is no program installed for a specific file, it previews it in hex Off topic: have you had the opportunity to compare it to Total Commander?

Thanks

Marin

[jdhurst]

Hello Marin - I have a license to Total Commander as well. I use Total Commander to synchronize my complex folder of programs and support files to my Desktop computer. I also use Total Commander to see Windows files in Vista that no other program (Windows Explorer or xPlorer2) will show you. Fun and games with Total Commander.

So I use Total Commander as described.
I renamed xPlorer2 as Windows Explorer and use it 98 percent of the time
I use the Vista Windows Explorer hardly at all.

.... JDH

[Marin85]

Offtopic: I thought xPlorer had an option to show all hidden files just like Vista explorer has, but I might be wrong...

EDIT: I just checked that out, and indeed it has. However, it seems to be buggy and it takes it some time to identify some hidden files and folders, but for others you can´t access them if you don´t go the whole path from Computer -> Local Diks -> etc... within the very left pane, which is weird. I believe it´s not supposed to be like this...

[jdhurst]

There is an interesting folder in C:\users\....\... called ContentWord and in there are temporary files Outlook and Word leave lying around that sometimes aren't deleted. I can find that folder with Total Commander, but not with any other tool. Mostly, I can find hidden files with xPlorer2, and I have hidden and system files turned on by default. But I just see more with Total Commander. That could be a failure to properly set on my part.
... JDH

[Marin85]

Update: I found out that there is no need to open a .pdf from within some internet browser to create a thumbnail preview instead of the regular boring pdf icon. You only need to browse to some folder containing pdf files from within Acrobat and select view -> tiles (from the explorer window within Acrobat). Then Acrobat creates thumbnail previews to the pfd documents contained in that particular folder.

Marin

[loyukfai]

But I guess this feature is strongly specific to each program and there are probably no way to "force" Vista doing it...

Vista has a built-in set of shell extensions that can generate and show previews of certain file types, like .JPG. Users can install additional programs to extend the functionality to support additional file types, like .PDF (via Acrobat) and certain video files (via K-Lite) that you've found out.

I myself has installed the ArtRage extension so that thumbnails can be generated from and showed for .PTG files. (http://www.artrage.com/artragedown.html)

You may find more on the Net, though I'm not aware of any repository which serves such programs through.

[Marin85]

Thanks for the interesting info! Is there any further descriptions to what programs this may/does apply? Some kind of list would very helpful.

Thanks

Marin

[loyukfai]

I'm not aware of any repository serving such information, but if you have a specific file type in mind, then it's easy to find out (if there's one) by searching with keywords "windows thumbnail preview (fill-in file extension)".

Cheers and have a nice weekend.

[Marin85]

I'm not aware of any repository serving such information, but if you have a specific file type in mind, then it's easy to find out (if there's one) by searching with keywords "windows thumbnail preview (fill-in file extension)".

This is exactly what I did with the pdf extension and I wasn´t really successful with that search strategy

Nice weekend, too

Marin

[Marin85]

Update: Win 7 32 bit creates the .pdf thumbnail previews automatically with Adobe Pro v9. However, this is not the case with Win 7 x64. Notice that my previous setup was Vista x64. I assume that Vista 32 bit would create .pdf thumbnails automatically too and that this is some issue with the x64 editions.

EDIT: I slightly changed the topic name to clarify the subject.