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Author Topic: • MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33: Thumbnail Text  (Read 16128 times)

MrC

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• MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33: Thumbnail Text
« on: August 16, 2013, 09:39:39 pm »

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:



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:



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]:



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, 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:



As we drill down into the view, we see the thumbnail text is still in italics as expected:



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:



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:



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:



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 ]
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InflatableMouse

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2013, 03:15:52 am »

Very nice again.

I knew it could be customized but I never did anything with it. I'll be playing around :P.

Thank you!
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Denti

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2013, 08:35:43 am »

Cool. How can I add an expression telling me the number of albums to be found within each artist?
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MrC

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2013, 01:42:59 pm »

Cool. How can I add an expression telling me the number of albums to be found within each artist?

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=78295.msg532393#msg532393
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kensn

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2013, 09:54:10 pm »

In the last example
Code: [Select]
<b>[Name]</b> it looks as if the second line of your thumbnail text is bold also, not just the name.

I am seeing the same in this expression I am using...
Code: [Select]
<b>[Artist]</b> - <i> GroupCount(Album) if(isequal(GroupCount(Album),1),Album, Albums) </I>
It bolds the whole thing..

EDIT: Looks to be the same as in the other areas.... Needed
Code: [Select]
<//b>will wait for this to get resolved...
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MrC

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2013, 01:48:27 am »

it looks as if the second line of your thumbnail text is bold also, not just the name.

A very good observation!  My mistake.  Yes, you need to escape the forward slash by doubling it.  Same with the italics thumbnail text in the top level category. Good catch!

<b>[Name]<//b>
[Album] [Duration]

Edit: I've fixed the original post and posted new screenshots.

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dtc

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2013, 11:19:17 am »

Great tips.

In addition to italics and bold, you can also do underline, font size and font color. 


<fontsize="115%">[Name]<//font>

<fontcolor="0000FF">[Name]<//font>

FF0000 is red, 00FF00 is green, 0000FF is blue.



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jctcom

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2013, 02:13:40 pm »

Hey all.  I am looking to do something similar to this. But I can't find a place or way to "Customize" what I am looking for.

I use the "Panes" view most of the time.  In the Panes view it shows "Album" by "Artist".   I have created an "AlbumSubtitle" field and I would like it to show "Album {AlbumSubtitle}" by Artist".

But I cannot find any way to customize that part of the view.

Carl.
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MrC

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HTPC4ME

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #9 on: August 19, 2013, 11:43:39 am »

this is such a neat idea, thanks for sharing MrC!
May i suggest maybe adding a title in the subjects, so that as tips grow we could search for tip of the week, and then see what each tip was. it would also help those who wanted to save this in their bookmarks.
Ex... MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33 - Thumbnail Text
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MrC

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Re: MrC's Tip of the Week 2013.33
« Reply #10 on: August 19, 2013, 12:24:41 pm »

May i suggest maybe adding a title in the subjects...

Great idea.  Done.
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