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MW Thumbs and Windows 7

Hi Martin.

I tried installing MW Thumb on Windows 7 today, using the Vista install option. Not sure if it's working correctly. I don't see the 'disable' an 'enable' buttons that are present on the XP-based panel.

I'm guessing that there's a compatability issue with Windows 7. Is there compatable version in the works?

Cheers,
Matthew.

Re: MW Thumbs and Windows 7

The Vista version doesn`t have the enable/disable options because Vista doesn`t use the same system for creating the thumbnails for the "standard" types (bmp, jpg, tiff,png, gif). This is the primary reason there are XP and Vista versions in the package. The core thumbnail code is the same in both cases but the interface code is different

In fact I haven`t been able to find a way to override the default datatypes in Vista so MWhumb will only handle the additional types and the default will always be handled by the internal vista system. The default thumb handler does a good job with the default typs so this is only a problem if you wish to use MWThumb for bmp (to view Extended Bmp correctly) and unfortunately there doesn`t seem to be any way around this.

Notice that you also don`t get the option to change Thumbnail size or turn off the thumbnail cache. This is because Vista doesn`t use the same methods - instead of a thumbs.db in each folder Vista stores a central database of all thumbnails and the view options in vista let you choose between 3 different sizes any time you like. In order to flush the thumbnail cache you need to use the Vista Disk-cleanup tool and the Thumb Settings program provides buttons to access this feature

I haven`t had a chance to try Win7 yet but I suspect (and am hoping) that it works in pretty much the same way as Vista. You can check if it is working by viewing a folder with some image files of a non-default type (like TGA, ACE or DDS) and seeing if thumbnails are correctly generated. Read the help that comes with the program as there are some idiosyncracies with Vista (and probably 7) that mean that the thumbnail cache sometimes need to be cleared out when trying to re-view images that had previously been viewed without the thumbnail extensions. Once Vista caches an image (even if it is only cacheing the "no image" icon) it remembers it until the file is physically changed or the cache is emptied