12th November 2001
Let's say you want to see all of the images sitting inside a certain folder. Sure, I suppose you could open all of them in your favorite graphics viewer. That might take a while, though. Best use Explorer's built-in thumbnail feature. Is disk speed an issue? What about disk space? Both are valid concerns, but they can be addressed easily with a little Registry diving. Alter the pixel size and quality of all thumbnails by navigating to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer. To change the size for each thumbnail, add a DWORD value and label it "ThumbnailSize" (sans quotes). This entry should be given a number between 32 and 256; I suggest 50 (instead of the default 100). To change the image quality of thumbnails, add a DWORD value and label it "ThumbnailQuality" (sans quotes). This entry should be given a number between 50 and 100; I suggest changing this one to 50 to start with, too. The next time you switch a folder to thumbnail view, your changes should be applied. Hold onto the SHIFT key when you select the "Thumbnail" option from the view menu if you want to turn off file names (to save screen space). SHIFT click again to turn 'em back on. Remember: you can also turn off thumbnail disk caching through the Folder Options dialog. In the Windows Explorer, click Tools | Folder Options | View | Do not cache thumbnails.