by Axel on Mon Mar 02, 2009 4:20 am
I see your points. Of course there is no such thing as an "instant thumbnail view", thumbnails are typically created and cached in some database, then retrieved when needed. Thumbnail databases needs maintenance functions, such as re-creation or re-indexing, packing etc and all this is clearly out of scope for FastPictureViewer. Programs not caching thumbnails are slow by necessity as opening and downscaling pictures everytime can certainly not be quick (one cannot rely on the presence of a suitable embedded thumbnail in all files).
FPV is used in scenarios involving browsing deep folder hierarchies containing hundreds of thousands of images (try it!). Most other programs would take a week just to create the thumbs while FPV grabs the files at about 1000 per second.
Windows already offers powerful search functions, including search on metadata, for example you can search for all images taken at f/5.6, or at 300mm etc, it would not make sense to duplicate all this functionality, also knowing that Windows 7 will probably expand even further on that.
Perhaps there is a way to configure alternative file managers to open FPV on files or folders?
Besides that a program launcher is currently in development and should appear soon. What is not clear yet is on what program edition it will appear.
Hitting Ctrl+E opens an Explorer window with the current image selected. If you set the Explorer window in thumbnail view it will open in this mode the next time around as it remembers per-folder settings, at least this is how it work on Vista. This gets you as close as possible to an instant thumbnail view.