Thumbnails

Thumbnails in Windows Explorer

Overview

When browsing in Windows it is often nice to be able to see the cover pages for your eBooks. User Scruffy has found a way to GREATLY help with the task.

How to do it

Win XP

First of all, get CDisplayEx - http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdisplayex Installing this, and using the included batchfile adds CDispShell.dll to your system. This will generate thumbnails of .cbr and .cbz files (which are comic formats, but really are rar and zip formats with images inside)

Now, let's add real zip and rar archives:

Create a file named thumbs.reg and put into it Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CompressedFolder\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{EF7605D6-C512-4F90-827B-5DE32DAB94F7}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.rar\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{EF7605D6-C512-4F90-827B-5DE32DAB94F7}"

This adds .zip and .rar, but let's take a step further, because .epub is really a zip file too: Code:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.epub\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
@="{EF7605D6-C512-4F90-827B-5DE32DAB94F7}"

Windows 7

For Windows 7 use CBX Shell (CBR, CBR - thumbnails) as a alternative to CDisplayEx - Thumbnails function. It is likely that this tool will work on earlier Windows versions as well.

Is easy is just install the CBX Shell and create a thumbs.reg with this code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.epub\ShellEx\{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}]
  @="{9E6ECB90-5A61-42BD-B851-D3297D9C7F39}"

if this code does not work use regedit to look for ".cbz" and then replace/rename the ".cbz" to ".epub"

Common comments

(obviously, you see the pattern, if you have other extensions you wish to "cover", which are really 'hidden in a zip' formats, such as .odt, just use the above, changing the .epub)

Clicking on the .reg file will ask you if you want to install these entries into your registry. Be warned, you could hurt your windows install doing the wrong thing if you don't know what you are doing. Not that the above will, but a disclaimer is in order here!!!! All the above does is point Windows to the DLL above (installed by CDisplayEx) for each of these extensions. (If you don't have winrar, but use 7zip for example, you might want to also do .rar instead of Winrar in the above)

The net effect is that the 'first' image will now be the thumbnail... so make sure the cover image is named with 00Cover, or otherwise numerically+alphabetically first.

Magically: covers when looking at the files in explorer!

Windows 10

After unsuccessfully trying everything for windows 10 64 bit and it still not working, the following finally worked for me Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.epub\ShellEx\, adding the following keys and their values

key
{BB2E617C-0920-11d1-9A0B-00C04FC2D6C1}
value
{9E6ECB90-5A61-42BD-B851-D3297D9C7F39}

key 
{00021500-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}
value
{9E6ECB90-5A61-42BD-B851-D3297D9C7F39}

File icon

It is also possible to make a unique icon for Windows in the icon view. For more information see the MobileRead thread on this subject.

See Also

• MobileRead forum thread comment here
• MysticThumbs - an efficient little thumbnail / icon viewer and image editor plugin for Windows.
• "For your convenience I made a small installer that first installs CBXShell then adds the above snippet to your registry" (worked on Win10 x64)
• Screen shot of the actual registry entry