Hello! News - 13th October, 2004 Hurray! Beta 1.1.1 has been released! It comes with the possibility for several filetypes per Thumbnail Extractor, and thus introducing BeerPack, one simple install; three image supports! "Three?" you say? YES! DDS support has arrived! Now go fetch! Note0: The new Thumbnail Extractors can't be used with old ThumbView, and vice-versa. Note1: Beta 1.1.0 was a closed beta test. Note2: School is in kill-mode. I won't be coding unless there are bug reports. Nor will DigitalDelusion. Intro ThumbView is a shell extension, that means it enables Windows XP Explorer to show thumbnails of formats not nativly supported by Windows XP when browsing in miniature-view! ThumbView handles windows registration, and all you need to do is download the extractors for the formats you want to have support for! Summary ThumbView enables windows to show thumnbails and infotips for fileformats that aren't nativly supported, by registering itself and using external Thumbnail Extractor DLL's for the actual image extraction. This gives ThumbView a very extensive support for thumbnail generation. It is very easy to write your own extractor if you have a custom format, or want to have support for some other format like PNG. ThumbView takes care of all the windows registration and integration. All you need to know is how to extract your dream format to a byte stream. Note! ThumbView is a shell extension which means it does not run as a process or eat memory or whatever. Windows only calls it when needed. There has been some requests for using ThumbView differently. Like generating a thumbnail for 3D models. Or having it display specific frames in .mpg files. How it got started When I was working on our project game Ninja Battles we had alot of PCX and TGA images. Keeping track of them was a big hassle because we had to open them in PaintShop Pro since Windows doesn't nativly support those files for generating thumbnails. After considering paying $8 for a commercial PCX thumbnail enabler, I decided to write my own. So here it is! Who are making it This is a joint cooperation between me and DigitalDelusion. I write the ThumbView package (see below). He writes the actual image extractors with his BEER (Bitmap Encapsulation & Extraction) library which currently supports dds, pcx, tga, gif and bmp. He's my 2nd party Thumbnail Extractor developer, and soulbrother. Technical data All code is open source, released under the MIT license. Feel free to comment the code or ask questions. ThumbView is separated in 4 parts. ExtractorManager, Registry, ShellExtension and Thumnbail Extractors. ExtractorManager is the actual UI (user interface) for controlling what Thumbnail Extractors are active. It also allows for uninstalling Thumbnail Extractors and autoinstalling extractors (called .tvx files). There are now two of them, the graphical is written in C#.NET. The simple comman version is in plain C++ and using a little Win32 API. Registry is the bridge between the ExtractorManager and the Thumbnail Extractors. This has three advantages. 1) Makes it possible to write the extractors using unmanaged C++ or C while using C# for the UI. 2) Handling all extractor registration, thus keeping functionality away from UI. 3) Makes creating new UI's really simple, example: ExtractorManager could be made using Nullsoft Installer. Registry is a DLL written in C++ and using Win32 API. ShellExtension handles all the windows integration. This is the actual DLL called when Windows want's a thumbnail or a infotip. It uses Registry to get ahold of the correct Thumbnail Extractor and extract the needed info/thumbnail. ShellExtension is a DLL written in C++ using ATL/COM and Win32 API. Thumbnail Exractors are more like 3rd party plugins. All they need to do is extract a thumbnail and/or provide image information. The user only installs/enables the Thumbnail Extractors they want. Ie. some users already have TGA support. These can be written with custom loaders, or wrap around existing libraries such as BEER and DeViL. They are written in either C or C++ and provide 2 functions necessary for windows extension and 3 functions for Thumbnail Extractor management. Comments and suggestions ALL comments are welcome! Everything from "the installer sucks" to "I'd like to see previews in explorer"! As long as it's backed up with an idea of how you'd prefer it to be ;) Current version Beta 1.1.1 Current features ¤ DDS, PCX and TGA support (displays alpha grid for transparency) ¤ Thumbnails in explorer ¤ InfoTips in explorer ¤ Autoinstalling Thumbnail Extractors ¤ One or multiple filetypes per Thumbnail Extractor ¤ Both Graphical(.NET) and Console versions of ExtractorManager In progress Seriema - making a DevIL Pack Where to get it Go here for the main page, or start downloading now!

Note! You have to download and install the program first. Then you just download and open the extensions you want!

Cheers! /JP [Edited by - Seriema on October 16, 2004 1:43:54 PM]

OMG! this ROXXORS my BOXXORS off!!!!

and it's like free!!!


*gives caek*

Quote:Original post by mike25025
i downloaded it and installed but it didnt do anything

didn't do anything as in even though you can see thumbnails of jpgs and bmps you don't get them generated for tga's or didn't do anything in some other way?

Works fine for me.

mike25025, that you have TGA support already probably means that you have Photoshop installed. I have the same thing, that's why I separated the PCX and the TGA so you can download only what you need ;)

Unless you missed it, you have to download each support file separatly.

*Hands over big plate of caek and pi*

Or, rather, rate++; - this is awesome!

*big smile* thank you benryves! *yummies down on the caek and pi with rating sprinkles*

If you have any comments whatsoever please tell me =)

I have found a minor bugg. I'll fix it as soon as I get home.

Ok bugs fixed! Beta 1.0.1 is released. Everyone that downloaded Beta 1.0, please reinstall (or just overinstall) with this new one! Fixed some issues involved with uninstalling.

This thing still r00lz!! ;) *bump*