Viewing .epub covers in Windows Explorer?

[Logarithmic]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Calibre works better than explorer. Explorer is one reason I stopped using windows. I can't see how having thumbnails in explorer saves time.

Though I do have many thousands of PDF that only have a numeric code unrelated to anything and used thumbnails of those in Explorer using an extension. Not needed now on Linux.

Because Calibre requires you to first off, have all your books in ITS library sorted how IT wants. Which I dislike. Second off if there are books that aren't necessarily something I'm currently reading or want in Calibre. But I want to browse for a cover rather then dealing with loading and deleting them or making a new library etc. It saves time. Finally. For things like comic books or children's books that you don't want cluttering up your Calibre library or only have for the sake of kids and don't want any of the Calibre features. Besides viewing covers. This solves that.

It's not about justifying why the program was made haha. I had reasons. People in this thread also had reasons. I just made it work how it should of worked all along. Now I'm sharing it for everyone!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Logarithmic

Compiled version is under releases.. On the right side.
It can be turned on and off for each individual filetype.
Epubs are technically a zip file. With a different filename and manafest. Figured might as well leave it there. CBZ and CBR are comic books formats. That are literally just 7z and RAR with different extensions as well.

Strictly speaking, CBZ is zip compressed, CB7 uses 7zip's 7z compression. I've only used one program that could handle .cb7 files and then only if they used LZMA/LZMA2, When I tried Bzip2, PPMd and Deflate compression, the results were rather disappointing unless you are overly fond of artifacts.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Logarithmic

Because Calibre requires you to first off, have all your books in ITS library sorted how IT wants.

Having my books in a calibre library doesn't bother me. OTOH, I seem to be able to sort my books in many different ways on many different fields, easily update the metadata (description, covers, publishers, various dates, etc.), keep track of my finished books, etc. And then there are all the plugins I find useful though others probably would list a different set of plugins as being useful.

[Turtle91]

I have been using the CBX Shell on Win64 for many years now. It was a little painful getting it set up. If your program's install process works better then that is AWESOME! Thank you!

I just went through the same process a couple of days ago to get Windows Explorer to display thumbnails of my SVG files....I really don't understand why Microsoft can't support these standard file types by default ?!?!?

As far as WHY would someone want thumbnails in Windows Explorer instead of Calibre.... I need to edit the ePubs (clean out all the html bloat from poorly coded eBooks) before I add the file to my Calibre OPDS Server. Being able to see the cover thumbnail makes that task much easier.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

As far as WHY would someone want thumbnails in Windows Explorer instead of Calibre.... I need to edit the ePubs (clean out all the html bloat from poorly coded eBooks) before I add the file to my Calibre OPDS Server. Being able to see the cover thumbnail makes that task much easier.

That's what my Intake library is for. Though I've never seen that much file bloat due to html files since they tend to compress very well. Embedded images, well, that's a whole different matter.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by DNSB

That's what my Intake library is for. Though I've never seen that much file bloat due to html files since they tend to compress very well. Embedded images, well, that's a whole different matter.

There's definitely a difference between file size and html bloat. I agree you will get your biggest file size changes by fixing the images - but badly coded/bloated html just makes my eye twitch ...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Logarithmic

Compiled version is under releases.. On the right side.
It can be turned on and off for each individual filetype.
Epubs are technically a zip file. With a different filename and manafest. Figured might as well leave it there. CBZ and CBR are comic books formats. That are literally just 7z and RAR with different extensions as well.

I know about the various formats. But, ZIP & RAR are not usually eBooks and sometimes they contain private things that you may not want shown. And usually ZIP & RAR have nothing to do with eBooks are the need for a thumbnail. .ePub, .CBR, and .CBZ are all good to have cover thumbnails.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Logarithmic

Because Calibre requires you to first off, have all your books in ITS library sorted how IT wants. Which I dislike. Second off if there are books that aren't necessarily something I'm currently reading or want in Calibre. But I want to browse for a cover rather then dealing with loading and deleting them or making a new library etc. It saves time. Finally. For things like comic books or children's books that you don't want cluttering up your Calibre library or only have for the sake of kids and don't want any of the Calibre features. Besides viewing covers. This solves that.

It's not about justifying why the program was made haha. I had reasons. People in this thread also had reasons. I just made it work how it should of worked all along. Now I'm sharing it for everyone!

If you put your eBooks in a directory tree as you want, you are stuck with that ONE directory tree That view is all you get. Plus, you have to click all over the place to see your eBooks. All you get to see is the directory names and the filenames. That's it.

But with Calibre, you get to see your eBooks in many different ways and you get to see the metadata as well as the cover.

So how is your own directory tree better then Calibre?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

There's definitely a difference between file size and html bloat. I agree you will get your biggest file size changes by fixing the images - but badly coded/bloated html just makes my eye twitch ...

What I do is is a lossless rescompress of the images. I use a value of 70. In most cases, the difference is not noticeable. But before the recompress, I reduce the size of the cover and titlepage to 1600 lines. Also, if there are embedded fonts I don't want, I'll delete them. I'll remove excess CSS classes as there can be hundreds of excess classes. And I'll delete HTML files I don't want such as review blurbs, other books, previews/adds for other books, mailing list signups, etc. And then any images with these deleted pages go as well. These things can make the ePub a bit smaller.

[Logarithmic]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I do is is a lossless rescompress of the images. I use a value of 70. In most cases, the difference is not noticeable.

you use MozJPG or some other method? I use MozJPG at 80 for a massive size reduction with almost no loss in quality, almost matches Googles image compression. I built an automated batch file that does it to any epub I tell it to. Very handy,

https://github.com/L0garithmic/epubfixxr
As soon as I finish scripting it, it should be here. Hopefully in a day or two.

[Turtle91]

I think this thread has been shoved pretty drastically off-topic.

The thread is discussing how to get thumbnails for epubs to display properly. It isn't discussing the alternative ebook management options, and certainly isn't discussing people's editing techniques.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Logarithmic

you use MozJPG or some other method? I use MozJPG at 80 for a massive size reduction with almost no loss in quality, almost matches Googles image compression. I built an automated batch file that does it to any epub I tell it to. Very handy,

https://github.com/L0garithmic/epubfixxr
As soon as I finish scripting it, it should be here. Hopefully in a day or two.

I use Calibre's editor. It has image tools for doing some image editing.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Logarithmic

I I know this thread is quite old. But it's one of the top results on Google for epub thumbnails and since nobody had a solid answer. Figured it post one. Me and a friend made modifications to a previous program and created a pretty perfect. Windows epub thumbnails handler.

https://github.com/dark-knight404/DarkThumbs

That looks really interesting. Thanks. You might want to make a separate thread for it in the Reading and Management forum.

[Logarithmic]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

That looks really interesting. Thanks. You might want to make a separate thread for it in the Reading and Management forum.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=4027079
Done, its here. Just don't delete this thread lol. It shows up as one of the first searches for epub thumbnails on google!

[fddekker]

One of my PC's was updated to Windows 10 vers. 2004 and all the EPub thumbnails are gone.

Just installed DarkThumbs and its back! Thank!