Displaying document thumbnails

A thumbnail is a miniaturized version of an image. Thumbnails are useful because they allow users to preview large images quickly and control which ones they want to download. The DjVu Browser Plug-in can display a list of thumbnails (one thumbnail for every page) in one side of the window.

The DjVu 3.5 document format allows you to generate thumbnails and embed them into the document. If you do this, the plug-in can display thumbnails for every page immediately.

If you decide not to generate thumbnails, the DjVu viewer and the DjVu plug-in can still generate thumbnails on the fly. In the Preference dialog, you can disable the thumbnail option by checking the Fast thumbnails checkbox. In the fast mode, image thumbnails are displayed only for pages that are already decoded. The viewer will not try to decode any other page simply to display the thumbnails.

You can turn on Thumbnails by choosing Show Thumbnails from the pop-up menu. Thumbnails are never displayed for single-page DjVu documents.

You can customize your thumbnails, allowing you to specify where they appear. To do this, choose Show thumbnails from the pop-up menu. By default, a set of thumbnails will be displayed along the left part of the window. You can resize that part, if you feel that it is either too small or takes too much space. You can also move the thumbnails to Right, Top, Bottom or Left of the DjVu image window. Do this by clicking the right mouse button on any thumbnail and choosing an option from the menu. Not all thumbnails contain images. This is because the document probably does not have embedded thumbnails, and the default thumbnail mode is fast mode. As a result, the plug-in displays thumbnails only for those pages that have already been decoded and cached.

You can also generate thumbnails for every page. The Fast thumbnails check box in the preferences dialog is on by default. If you clear the Fast thumbnails checkbox, you will disable the fast mode and will allow the plug-in to generate thumbnails for every page.