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Configuring Thumbnail Cache
| Configuring Thumbnail Cache
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| Though the thumbnail cache is quite sophisticated and subtle, it works seemlessly in the background. You don't need to take care of the details. It is just there behind the curtains, and makes the thumbnail display really fast. You will only get into interaction with the thumbnail cache when you are setting up its parameters.
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| First of all, you can set up the location and the maximal size of the cache.The thumbnail cache is a unique folder that must be in your fastest hard drive. You should absolutely avoid placing the thumbnail cache on a network drive.
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| To specify the thumbnail cache folder, click the PPP Options... item on the Options menu. Then select the Thumbnails tab. At the bottom of the page is the Thumbnail cache group box as shown in Figure 7-10.
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Figure 7-10. Setting Up Thumbnail Cache
| The files in the thumbnails cache can be compressed by clicking the Compress Cache button. It is cleared by clicking on the Clear Cache button. Before clearing all the entries, PPP asks you to confirm this operation. The maximum number of images in the thumbnail cache can be specified by setting the Maximal number of images in the cache.
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| The image folders can be specified in the same dialog box as the thumbnail location, but on the Environment tab. At the bottom of the page is the Image folders to be cached automatically group box as shown in Figure 7-11.
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Figure 7-11. Specifying Image Folders
| To specify your most frequently used image folders, click the Add button. You can only add one folder at a time. To delete a folder from the list, select it and click the Delete button. To clear the whole list, click the Clear button. These commands can also be activated by right-clicking on the image folder list and selecting the appropriate option from the popup menu.
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| All of the images in the specified image folders will be automatically cached. The other image files on your hard disk or on your network drives will not be cached automatically. If an image is not cached automatically, it will be displayed slowly the first time. Therefore, it is very important to specify the image folders that you regularly browse with the Thumbnail View. However, you should not specify all your image folders. The thumbnail generator takes up some CPU time, so it might slow down the computer. You should only cache those folders that you usually browse with the Thumbnail Viewer. If some of your images are subject to change, you might not want to automatically cache them. The cache is only efficient for static images. If an image changes all the time, the thumbnail cache entry will expire all the time as well, so caching these kinds of images is a waste of the system resources.
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| Remember, you can change the list of the cached folders anytime, even several times a week. So don't be afraid of reconfiguring the thumbnail cache parameters when you feel the need.
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| The image folder caching is not recursive, so the thumbnail generator will not cache images in the subdirectories. Therefore, specifying C:\ does not mean that all of your hard disk will be cached, it just means the root directory. If you want to specify a directory and its subdirectories, you must manually add the subdirectories to the image folder list.
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| PPP does not always watch your image folders. This would take up a lot of processor time. Instead, PPP caches the image folder list as follows:
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| · | When you clear the thumbnail cache with the Clear Cache button on the Thumbnails page.
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| · | When you select Refresh Thumbnail Cache from the Options menu.
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© 1998-2002 ELAN GMK
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