Preview Pane questions

joe7dust · 24 Sep 2010

I just discovered you can hit ALT + P to show a preview pane. What useful things do you guys get out of this function?

I noticed it shows album art for some mp3. Does anyone know where it is getting this picture from?

One kind of neat thing it does is show off how detailed icons are. Noone ever really gets to see that level of detail on them, so now the artists work can be seen more.

I remember when icons were barely more than colored dots, like 16X16 or something.

Dzomlija · 25 Sep 2010

joe7dust said:

I just discovered you can hit ALT + P to show a preview pane. What useful things do you guys get out of this function?

That's a new one for me too! Is usually keep the preview pane on permanently, but do occasionally turn it off when I use Screen Snap on two explorer windows.

joe7dust said:

I noticed it shows album art for some mp3. Does anyone know where it is getting this picture from?

The mp3 album art displayed in the preview pane is embedded in the mp3 file itself, inside the ID3v2 tag.

You can read the tutorial I wrote on how to do this yourself: Windows Media Player Library Album Art

joe7dust said:

One kind of neat thing it does is show off how detailed icons are. Noone ever really gets to see that level of detail on them, so now the artists work can be seen more.

I remember when icons were barely more than colored dots, like 16X16 or something.

16x16 icon bring back some memories from my days with Windows 3.1, when icons where only 16x16 and 32x32 in either 2 or 16 color modes...

If I remember correctly, starting from Vista, can include a 256x256 PNG image also.

joe7dust · 25 Sep 2010

Wow thanks for the detailed reply. I have been using TSF a lot lately and gotten used to their subpar posting.

I am temp banned for 'multiple posting' when they were just slightly related topics! lol..

Anyways speaking of Screen Snap, is there a way to adjust the left/right? I would like right to be 2/3 for widescreen browsing then have space for icons/explorer/etc.

Dzomlija · 25 Sep 2010

joe7dust said:

Wow thanks for the detailed reply. I have been using TSF a lot lately and gotten used to their subpar posting.

I am temp banned for 'multiple posting' when they were just slightly related topics! lol..

Anyways speaking of Screen Snap, is there a way to adjust the left/right? I would like right to be 2/3 for widescreen browsing then have space for icons/explorer/etc.

Screen Snap only works on 50/50 with the <WINDOWS_KEY>+<LEFT> or <WINDOWS_KEY>+<RIGHT> keyboard commands.

I wish there was a way to have Screen Snap place the windows at the top or bottom of the screen, because I've rotated one of my widescreen monitors to portrait...

joe7dust · 25 Sep 2010

I just found the best use for PP yet! It shows the contents of text files! I'll never open another small text file again. :) Was this in vista? If so I feel like a dolt for not knowing about it till now. (not that I ever used Vista much, thought it was junk)

Cool deal on the portrait monitor. One of my teachers at uni had a monitor that swiveled and she would use it for reading emails. Portrait is so awesome for reading long pages, but I don't really need it that bad to justify a 2nd monitor. Good luck on me rotating my 60lb plasma that I use for a monitor. :S

Vertex · 25 Sep 2010

The best thing it can do for me is that if I have the preview pane, then I clicked at a video file on Windows Explorer, heck it can play the video straight from Windows Explorer!

And if I double clicked at the media player on the preview pane, it would even display full screen just like in Windows Media Player. Its actually called the Windows Media Player Rich Preview Handler.