Thumbnail Preview (Open)

The Open Panel provides methods for builing and managing Thumbnail Preview Icons for EazyDraw files and other files that contain image information.

Two controls are provided near the bottom of the Open panel for working with preview Iocns of an image files contents.

The preview becomes a permanent part of the file. The Icon Family is automatically generated from the file image. This family of icons is added to the files resource fork, which means that the file will be represented by a custom icon in the Finder and other applications. This information will increase the size of a file by 30 - 60 kBytes.

Adding a preview thumbnail will modify the target file. This will change the Modification date for the file, as reported by the Finder.

Build Preview: If a file is selected, you may build a preview thumbnail for the file by clicking the "Build Preview" button.

If the selected file already has a custom icon, the Build Preview button with change to Rebuild. This is because the custom preview icon is built specifically at one point in time. Further changes to the file content image are not necessarily reflected in the custom preview icon. Use the Rebuild feature to update the thumbnail to the current file contents.

Add Previews: Use this feature with care --. When checked, this will cause EazyDraw to automatically generate preview thumbnail icons for all files in all folders browsed and viewed by the Open panel. If files with large complex images are encountered, this may take a significant amount of time.

Since the automatic add preview option could involve significant amounts of time, it is always disabled when the Open panel is called. The best practice is to navigate to the desired folder then check the box, and uncheck it when done.

Changes to existing icons are sometimes not recorded by the Open and Save panels. This seems to be a flaw in the operating system. Changes are immediately noted by the Finder, but open and save panels in EazyDraw and other applications (probably Cocoa Applications) may not update to a changed custom icon until you quit and restart the application. This may be corrected in future releases of OS X.

An attached thumbnail icon will transfer with your file to other computers. If the file is emailed to other Mac OS X users, they will see the custom icon and not the system provided document icon. This applies to EazyDraw files and other types (TIFF, JPG, GIF, PDF, etc) of files.

The Finder may be used to copy and paste these thumbnails. From the Finder, select Get Info for the two files or folders of interest. Select the icon image found on the upper left of the information window - a faint border is then shown around the icon. You may then Copy the icon. On the other information window, select the icon and Paste -- the icon will then become the preview thumbnail for the file or folder.

The Finder Get Info window may be used to remove a custom thumbnail icon. Select the file, perform Get Info, select the thumbnail icon on the upper left of the information window, hit delete. This will return the file display icon to the standard one derived from the operating system.

A thumbnail that is something other than the image contained in the file may be applied from the Export ICNS panel. In this case you can use EazyDraw to create a thumbnail graphic and attach this independent image to the file as the finder icon for the file.