microsoft
Animated GIF thumbnails/icons in windows explorer.
With a toggleable option, GIFs that normally show up as an image preview in explorer would be animated.
A nice touch would be to specify the quality of the preview, the framerate, and an option to only animate it if it is selected in windows explorer.
This would not be in the preview area, this would be the actual icon or thumbnail of the icon that is animated.
@chrdavis as you just did this for SVG, i'm betting it was rendered into an icon so doing this wouldn't be possible, correct?
Unfortunately, Windows Explorer does not expose such functionality for thumbnails. We can only provide a static bitmap.
Don't use thumbnails, then? If it's possible to implement a document preview handler with code syntax highlighting and a bunch of custom tabs - which I've seen before - surely this is possible.
Well I guess if you want any sort of functionality then copy this text that I found here: https://www.w7forums.com/threads/animate-all-gif-files-in-windows-explorer.15806/
<html><head><title>Animator</title></head>
<body><script type="text/vbs">
set fso=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set fldr=fso.GetFolder(".")
for each file in fldr.files
if lcase(right(file.name,4))=".gif" then
document.write "<img src=""" & file.name & """>"
end if
next
</script></body></html>
Then name that file "animator.hta" and place it in your gif folder. Run it and you will get a viewer that displays all gifs in that folder. Does not look nice but it works
A windows explorer preview handler for animated GIFs would be possible. The preview handler hosts a HWND that could be the WebView control with the GIF loaded.
A windows explorer preview handler for animated GIFs would be possible. The preview handler hosts a HWND that could be the WebView control with the GIF loaded.
Would this implementation cause lag in windows explorer or high cpu usage to the desktop window manager and/or create lots of cache files (multiple png files)?
Would this implementation cause lag in windows explorer or high cpu usage to the desktop window manager and/or create lots of cache files (multiple png files)?
Maybe it's an option to have a setting to only play the gif when its selected.
Hopefully its optional in case if users have powerful enough pcs to handle it
Would this implementation cause lag in windows explorer or high cpu usage to the desktop window manager and/or create lots of cache files (multiple png files)?
Maybe it's an option to have a setting to only play the gif when its selected.
I think on a hover would be better
And might I extend this request to also include animated png files or "apng" files. Putting animations on the icon I think could cause trouble for anyone with a large amount of gif files in a folder. Even if wanting to animate only on hover or selection, I'm pretty sure you'll have to battle explorer caching. Imagine, if you will, when you first open a folder with a ton of pictures in it set to "large" thumbnails. It's going to process each preview one by one and even once cached it will have to load several pages of animated icons to keep up with scrolling. At the moment, even just static image preview icons don't really keep up all the time. But I would love to at the very least have explorer preview pane show animated gifs and pngs and all the other "animated" picture formats like the animated photos from apple's heif or heic formats as well.
