[ANN] "Thumbs and Slides"

[Wilhelm Sanke]

I have "revved up" an older "thumbs" stack since we started the 
discussion about creation and modification dates of images and have 
added a "slides page" to the stack where the images can be displayed 
full-screen either step-by-step or as a slide show.

(<http://www.sanke.org/Software/ThumbsAndSlides.zip> or from the 
"Samples" page of my website)

Although there are a number of slide stacks around in the Rev community 
and elsewhere, I offer this stack for public use and for those that 
would be interested to test yet another variant. I find it satisfactory 
and in some respects better than the image and slide tool supplied with 
WindowsXP.
The layout of the controls on the "slides page" adapts to any screensize 
and the height of the stack is chosen to enable the use of the stack 
even on most modern laptop screens with a size of 1280x800.

With most controls turned off on he slides page (using the "hide 
controls" button) the slide show offers an almost undisturbed view of 
screensize images, whose display tempo can be adjusted any time even 
during a slide show.

 From the "Introduction":

Thumbs page:

The first 12 JPG images from the chosen folder are displayed as 
proportionally resized to fit into the maximal width and height of the 
240X180-pixels thumbs.
The total number of images is shown in the field above image one.
You can choose a different image to begin with using button "choose 
start image"
The date shown after the image names is the "modification date", which 
is in most cases identical with the creation date of the image.
Clicking on "next images" or "previous images" will load the next or 
previous 12 images from the folder.

Clicking on one of the thumbs will display the chosen image in 
full-screen view on the "Slides page".

Slides page:

Left-clicking on the full-screen image returns to the "Thumbs Page".

Button "controls" shows or hides the controls for setting the image 
dimensions, to expand or shrink the image, and to start and stop a slide 
show beginning with the actually displayed image.

The options to be chosen from the grouped radio buttons in the topleft 
corner are:

- "screen size": the image will be resized to the screensize 
irrespective of its own dimensions.
- "real screen size": the image will be resized proportionally to fit 
into the rect of the screen.
- "real size": the image is displayed in its proper size, meaning that 
when the image is larger than the screen rect it is displayed enlarged 
and mid-centered (which is a tolerable and nice enlargement effect 
possibly up to image sizes 284x2136, depending of course on the screen 
size and the fact that essential image information is contained in the 
middle of the image.

Button "enlarge" enlarges the image proportionally in subsequent steps.
Button "shrink" does just  the opposite.

Right-clicking with mousedown on the image and dragging moves the image 
around on the screen, which may be useful for inspecting details of an 
enlarged picture.

Buttons "next slide" and "previous slide" (or the arrow buttons when 
they are hiddden) navigate to the next or previous image. If the last or 
first image of the folder is reached, "next" or "previous" are continued 
nevertheless according to the image order in the folder.

Button "start show" starts a continuous and possibly endless slide show, 
button "stop" stops the show - as does using any of the buttons "next 
slide", "previous slide", or the arrow buttons (or returning to the 
Thumbs Page by clicking on the image).

During a slide show the dimensions of the displayed image (sreen size, 
real screen size, real size) can be changed any time - or "hide 
controls" and "show controls" can be applied - without interrupting the 
show.
It is also possible to change the "display time" of the image during a 
slide show by adjusting the slider control in the bottomright corner.

--Wilhelm Sanke
<http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia>