It would be great if the content explorer showed thumbnails of images when in the content explorer (the same way windows explorer does). This would help users to easiliy identify images without having to open them.
This is possible today. You just need the right “Display Format” - one that has a column in it that shows Thumbnails. Any items that have a Thumbnail field on them, the thumbnail will show in that column.
This is something we demo today. For some reason, it often gets missed in “Getting Started” (along with lots of various usability tweaks for contributors).
We used to do a session at the User Groups called “top 10 things you didn’t know you can already do in Rhythmyx” and this was always on the list.
This implementation is documented in Customizing Content Explorer. See “Adding Thumbnail Previews to Display Formats” on page 60.
RLJII
Great. I will give it a try!
Just tried this. Have added the column into the display format, but nothing is appearing? The column appears but it is blank. Do I have to have a thumbnail field in the CT? If so, are there any other additional fielda I would need? If this is the case, FYI my idea wanted it to be dynamically generated.
I have also created a display format specifically for showing thumbnails, however this does not appear (and in actual fact none of the additional display formats appear) in the folder properties drop down? Can you explain what I would have to do to add this additional display format in the drop down?
Thanks
Georgina,
Yes, the Content Type must have a thumbnail field, and you must also have a Template that renders the thumbnail. As the instructions specify, you must also map the Content Type to the Template you want to use to render the thumbnail.
Rhythmyx does not include functionality to generate thumbnails dynamically, but the PSO toolkit does include a module that can generate thumbnails and populate the appropriate fields automatically when creating an image Content Item.
RLJII
Georgina,
This first thing I would check is the Community Visibility of the Display Format to ensure that the users Community has access to it.
RLJII
The documentation doesn’t make it clear what sort of template it needs to be.
I have assumed it is a binary template is this correct?
[QUOTE=rljohnson;3513]This implementation is documented in Customizing Content Explorer. See “Adding Thumbnail Previews to Display Formats” on page 60.
RLJII[/QUOTE]
This was very helpful, I wish I knew about this from the start!
I have set this up in Rhythmyx 6.6.
Here are the important notes that I think are missed in this thread so far:
[ol]
[li]When updating the addThumbnailURL.properties file with the content type id and template id - YES it is the BINARY template id you must use.
[/li]
[li]You don’t have to use a field specifically called ‘thumbnail’ to be able to add the Thumbnail preview to a Display Format (in my tests I used the img2 fields when defining the bindings for my binary image thumbnail template - it is the template mapping that determines what is displayed in the Thumbnail colum of the Display Format).
[/li][/ol]
In my tests I:
[ol]
[li]Created a new Content Type (CT) called ‘myImg’ (id=324) by copying ‘rffImage’.
[/li][li]Installed the PSOToolkit and applied the PSOThumbnailGenerator extension to the ‘myImg’ CT so that when a file is uploaded to the img1 field, upon creation or update of a ‘myImg’ item, its img2 field(s) will be populated with the thumbnail image generated by the PSOThumbnailGenerator.
[/li][li]Created two binary templates (myImg type specific):
[/li] - myBnImageThumbnail (id=577)(using the img2 fields)
- myBnImage (id=597)(using the img1 fields)
[li]Made the ‘myImg’ CT, ‘myBnImage’ and ‘myBnImageThumbnail’ templates visible in ‘myCommunity’.
[/li][li]Created an ‘Images’ folder in ‘mySite’ and created several new images of type ‘myImg’.
[/li][li]Followed the instructions from the Customizing Active Assembly & Content Explorer Interfaces guide for Adding Thumbnail Previews to Display Formats. Initially, I added 324=577 to the addThumbnailURL.properties file and then added the sys_thumbnail filed to the Default display format. After restarting the server, the results were in - the thumbnail images for each ‘myImg’ item were displayed in the Content Explorer when using the ‘Default’ display format. As per this screenshot: thumbnail_img_preview.jpg
[/li][li]Curious as to what would happen if I updated the addThumbnailURL.properties file to use the full image binary template (324=597) instead of the thumbnail image template. After restarting the server agian, this worked as expected but made the Content Explorer less usable. As per this screenshot: full_img_preview.jpg
[/li][/ol]
IN CONCLUSION: I would NOT recommend using full sized image templates in the Preview column when you can set up the PSOThumbnailGenerator to create smaller images for you with minimal effort / cost. I believe using full sized images would eventually lead to performace issue’s and over all a worse user experience which is the opposite of what adding the preview feature is trying to acheive.
This complete configuration should take a consutlant or skilled developer a few hours to complete for a standard implementation (i.e. to install the PSO Toolkit, configure the PSOThumbnailGenerator for image types, create the new binary template for the thumbnail image(s) and set up the feature in the Display format). To see the results each image item in the CMS for which you’d like to see a thumbnail preview would need to be ‘updated’ so that the PSOThumbnailGenerator can work its magic to create the thumbnail. This should be a trivial task, but may become combersone depending on how many items need to be updated.
All in all this is a fantastic feature of the product which should improve the user experience signifigantly.
Vern, I am curious what other things does Percussion have in the list of “top 10 things you didn’t know you can already do in Rhythmyx”?