Another week, another tip. And this week's tip is all about Thumbnail Text.
You see this text, for example, at the bottom of a Categories View such as Albums or Artists in Standard View. Here a sample Albums view showing the thumbnail text:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/ThumbnailText_zps69fbaaa8.png)
So how is this text generated, and can it be configured? While it certainly isn't magic (but does have some magical properties), it definitely can be configured. And it's configured under the view tab's Thumbnails > Thumbnail Text menu item:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/ConfigureThumbnailText_zpsdb7f173b.png)
This opens an Expression Editor dialog, where you can edit the expression used to calculate the thumbnail text. The default value used for thumbnail text is [Name]:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/Editor_zps598802b2.png)
We'll come back to customizing the text later. Because, I can hear you thinking:
But wait, MrC, you said this was the Albums view! What's that [Name]
doing there, and how come it says [Name], but the thumbnail text showing
under your albums is the album's name? I thought [Name] was the field
used for track names and movie names. Are you trying to pull a fast one?
Ok, I did say thumbnail text had some magical properties. In a Categories View, [Name] takes on the identity of the category at the current level of navigation. It's an alias. To understand this better, the stock Genres view is defined with the following categories:
Genre
Album Artist (auto)
Album
You can drill down into each category, and when you do, at each level, Name takes on the values of:
Name <-- Genre
Name <-- Album Artist (auto)
Name <-- Album
This is really nice, because it means that regardless of the level you are at, you always get thumbnail text appropriate for the level. Nifty.
Let's get back to customizing, because that's probably why you're here anyway; after all, this is a Tips post, not Education Hour. You can customize this text by adding any valid expression (http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Center_expression_language), plus a few HTML font properties, in the Thumbnail Text expression edit box shown above. For example, let's italicize the text in the Genres view. I've taken the liberty of skipping ahead and testing it out first, as you'll notice by the fancy new thumbnail text:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/italics_zpsabf66c30.png)
As we drill down into the view, we see the thumbnail text is still in italics as expected:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/italics2_zpse202f173.png)
At each level, MC inherits the thumbnail text from its top-level parent. And this leads us to wonder if MC allows each level to have its own unique thumbnail text. It does, so lets see it in action. Drill down one level in the Genres view to get to the Album Artist (auto) view. Now go change the Thumbnail Text from italics to bold:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/boldonly_zpsf60159a7.png)
Now dive down one more level to the Album view, and you'll see that album thumbnail text is shown in italics. This demonstrates the inheritance, and that a lower-level category doesn't inherit from its immediate parent, but rather from the top-level of the view:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/italics3_zpsb8c09173.png)
An expression in the thumbnail text is valid for a single line of thumbnail text. By adding another expression on a separate physical line, you can add a second, and a third, etc. line of thumbnail text. For example, these two expressions:
<b>[Name]<//b>
[Album] [Duration]
were used to create the this:
(http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb336/Mr__C/MC%20Screenies/multilineupdated_zps9d75e184.png)
It is important to understand that each physical line of text in the thumbnail text editor outputs a physical line of thumbnail text, even if the expression results in no output. You can't collapse the number of lines, so you're either in or your out with multi-line text.
Folks here on Interact have come up with many useful ways of customizing Thumbnail and Caption text. I've seen star ratings, colorized text dependent on ratings, watched/listened status, missing items, and many more. Have fun, and see what you can imagine.
[ Go read last week's Tip (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=82653.0) ]