HTML and Quickpreview in Beta

mimeryme · Post by **mimeryme** » 2004 May 12, 17:02

In the tips included with the beta, there's a mention of a graphic preview of HTML. Does this work only with IE as the default browser? I've mine set to Firefox and only see the text preview instead.

Also, I was experimenting with the encoding selection in the Quickpreview area. After setting the encoding to Unicode for a preview, the setting is unchangeable and instead shows a dimmed entries in the encoding selection menu with the check on Windows. This remains so for that file until you leave the directory. Is this intentional?

Post by **nikos** » 2004 May 12, 17:22

the html preview requires the same plumbing that makes all thumbnails tick. Can you see any thumbnails at all?

having said that, i heard that XP SP1 switched html previewing off as a "security precaution". It's a simple thing to put it back on though with registry tweaking

the unicode thingy is a "feature"

it goes away if you refresh ctrl+R

mimeryme · Post by **mimeryme** » 2004 May 12, 18:57

Thanks for the info nikos. I can see thumbnails just fine, but I am using XPsp1.

Post by **nikos** » 2004 May 12, 19:34

i think if you add the key:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.htm\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}

and set it the default value
{EAB841A0-9550-11cf-8C16-00805F1408F3}

you should get html thumbnails back!
(repeat for html)

windinthew · Post by **windinthew** » 2004 Aug 16, 01:32

I tried Nikos' reg fix as above for XP1 SP1 but it does not make html pages visible as thumbnails or appear in the preview pane for me. I had quite a good look around including google without finding anything. I tried x2 on a win98 setup so of course saw the html pages in the preview pane but it looked like it was only using 256 colours. Is that how it is meant to be? I now assume from some other explorer replacements I tried which rendred html pages fully in xp1 sp1 that they were using an instance of IE not a thumbnail, otherwise I would not be able to see them ?

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Aug 16, 08:59

i haven't tried this myself (i work with w2000) but it seemed to be working for other people

can you see html previews in windows explorer?

JRz · Post by **JRz** » 2004 Aug 16, 09:08

To help you make html preview appear more easily use the procedure I describe here : How to turn HTML preview back on for WinXPSP1

windinthew · Post by **windinthew** » 2004 Aug 16, 11:07

JRz thanks for the xp regfix to display html thumbnails. Running this as a reg file got my html thumbnails back too, it "looked" right when I added this manually but it could not have been. I think it is kind of an X2 issue which should be in FAQ, because as I found, some explorer replacements will give html previews in xp1 sp1 without this regfix, and I understand there may not even be a fix for sp2?

I would be interested if anyone would like to try FileAnt

http://www.fileant.com/

which does render html without the xp regfix and tell me how that program does that and see if they agree the quality of that preview is of browser standard compared to a thumbnail view of the same page. I want to be clear I am not recommending fileant - it's convoluted and insists on loading a media player which has to be turned off separately on exit. But I fear it renders html previews much nicer.

Thanks to all.

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2004 Aug 16, 11:31

re: XP-sp2 - I am running sp2 now and have no problems with html previews. I had implemented the regi-fix discussed above a while back (on sp1), and have not made any registry adjustments since installing sp2 last weekend.

re: preview quality - I never thought of the feature as being more than a preview. It's useful as a quick ID for whether to open the file for detail reading or editing. If nikos were to try and expand x2 to be all things to all people; it would become a huge desktop suite. Just having a little preview, IMO, is in keeping with the intent of a file manger app.

Having said that, I see a potential for a companion add-on (like Editor2 for text files); but it may be too 'big' as part of x2 itself.

JRz · Post by **JRz** » 2004 Aug 16, 12:41

I agree with Fred, both on not having to do the fix again after installing XP SP2 and with regard to the preview functionality of X². If you want to do more than just previewing, use an apropriate tool for that

windinthew · Post by **windinthew** » 2004 Aug 16, 15:33

I am VERY glad to hear that the regfix stands after installing sp2 for xp. Thanks for that. I do remain a little concerned about the colour quality of html previews in a paid program, I was shocked at the colours in some of my own web pages and had to open them in IE to satisfy myself they were as I intended which defeats the purpose of the program. Of course I don't know but I doubt a proper html viewer as seen in other comparable programs I tried is a big resource hog or file size extender and could be used for display of images as well. If it is too large perhaps it could be an optional plug in. It'll do for now, but long term I don't think this should be dismissed out of hand, even if I seem to be more concerned with colours than some of the other kind souls here. As for Fred's point, were you suggesting an WYSIWYG html editor, you can of course edit the source code in the editor?

REGARDS TO ALL

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2004 Aug 16, 16:41

I wasn't meaning to suggest anything specific about html editor functionality -- other than that an add-on might be the way to approach adding expanded features, whether as a viewer or WSIWYG editor.

PS - re regifix - [update, correction:] Although I suspected that XP-sp2 wrote its own new registry settings, JRz found that it doesn't (see below). But at least we know that "XP2" does honor the subject regifix, even if it was applied to XP-sp1.

JRz · Post by **JRz** » 2004 Aug 16, 21:50

As far as I know SP2 doesn't fix it itself, but indeed leaves this particular reg setting as it was before installing SP2 (my pc @work didn't have the fix, but was installed with SP2. Had to fix it after SP2 was installed, so that rules out that SP2 fixes html viewing itself)

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2004 Aug 16, 23:37

That's good to know -- even though it means new users on xp2 will still need the regifix to see html previews. {I have amended my supposition in earlier post, to avoid confusion}

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Aug 17, 06:48

if there's one to blame about html preview quality that's only Balmer!
i know nothing about graphics, html or otherwise, just using system services to generate them