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Add-in Review: WHSThumbnailer

By on July 4, 2010 in Apps & Add-in Reviews, Reviews, Windows Home Server Reviews

I have a confession.

I have been a slacker lately in attending to new WHS v1 add-ins.  Call it Vail-itis or whatever you wish to term it.  Basically, my focus has been elsewhere, but it is time to get back on track and tackle some of the new add-ins circulating around the web.

On my plate today is an add-in that perked my interest at an earlier date, but I have only recently been able to take a closer look at.  The add-in?  As you may guessed, it is WHSThumbnailer.  And the first question that may come to mind is “What is WHSThumbnailer?”  According to the author, Antony Croft, WHSThumbnailer is

a photo resizer / thumbnail generator

With WHSThumbnailer, you can even add watermarks to photos.

Personally, I don’t need a thumbnail generator, but I most certainly have a use for such a feature as a photo resizer.

How well does it work?  Let’s find out.

Installation

Installing the add-in is as simple as any other add-in.  Copy the msi installer to your D:Software Add-ins folder, open the WHS Setting Window in the console and install the software from the Add-ins tab, as shown below.

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Reopen the WHS console, locate and click on the WHSThumbnailer tab.

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The first thing that impressed me was the program layout.  Very nice graphics and modern icons.  Nice use of colors and text style.  It would seem that Antony knows a thing or two about program layout.  Very professional looking and it looks more like a commercial program versus an enthusiast generated program.  The user manual reinforces that perception:

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Cool looking graphics and layout is one thing, as it draws one in to take a closer look.  How well it works is something else.  So, time to check out well the program works.

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About Jim Clark

Hello. I’m from the heartland of the U.S. Lots of corn and beans, although Iowa is a lot more than just farmland. It also has a few computer enthusiasts (no, not me!). I’ve been around PCs since I got my 1st PC XT aloooong time ago. WGS is one of the first sites I found centered around WHS. And the best. Every once in awhile, I do get away from the KB and enjoy time with and my wife and our 4 kids. And I do have a day job.
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  • Shuft

    Thanks for the review!

    I'm the author of this add-in. Although it's not clear, changes to settings (thumbnail size, watermarking, etc) will only take effect on NEW items added to the work items queue. Existing items in the queue that were created with the old settings remain unaffected. Perhaps this is something I can look to alter going forward. Happy to take feedback on this.

    As for adding folders / files – I get a lot of kickback on that dialog :P – having said that, Microsoft reccomends that users interact with their WHS via the shares because of the Disk Migrator – so I am following best practice here.

    Once again, thanks for the review, and I will take your comments into consideration for future development!

    Ant.

  • Shuft

    RE: howartp's comments: He's quite right, the new Image Resizer Powertoy is excellent – and the best choice for interactive image resizing.

    However, the idea behind WHSThumbnailer is that it can 'watch' folders and automatically generate thumbnails of any new images added in those folders (or subfolders) – hence noninteractive image resizing – just the kind of thing an Add-In should do – quietly perform some useful function in the background – at least thats what I hope to achieve!

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/howartp howartp

    I've not installed this add-in as for me, although the functionality is great, any tool that performs functions like these should not require logging into the WHS console and adding files/folders then hitting start – I can resize any number of photos in a folder to any size using the new XP/Vista/Win7 version of the Image Resizer PowerToy previously released by Microsoft (available at http://imageresizer.codeplex.com) just by right-clicking them and choosing the options. Note there are additional options in the new version that didn't exist in the popular XP release. I'm not in any way afilliated with either of these products, I'm just a WHS user who resizes images at home and work regularly using this tool and thought I should put my two penneth in. Whether this addin has any use for Flickr remains to be seen as the reviewer couldn't review that bit and I don't have Flickr account either.