🚀 go-pugleaf

And I wonder if one of the reasons the PDF-Xchange trick works is that IT installs to the 64-bit program files folder (even though I assume it's a 32-bit program). RealPlayer also installs to the 64-bit folder on Windows 7 64-bit, although I KNOW it's a 32-bit program. When I first saw it doing this, I feared none of its plug-ins etc would work--but they work fine.

Makes me wonder if the simplest hack would simply be to force Reader9 to install to the 64-bit program files (the installer does give you the option to change the default destination). But that experiment will have to wait for another time.

At any rate, I can confirm that the PDF-Xchange trick does work on Windows 7 64-bit as well, so thanks, Chris, for, um, giving us a thumbnail preview of that trick. Well, for MOST pdf files, anyway. I found a few that wouldn't show thumbnails, but that may be a function of what program created them and how. (These are not MY pdfs - they're just accumulated research from all over on all subjects. If it were just things I had created with Creative Suite, I would just use Bridge. But the vast majority of PDF use is by business and office users on business and office computers, who have neither Bridge nor any other Adobe product except Reader and/or Acrobat. I would think Adobe would want to keep them happy.)

'Thumbnails' is actually a bit of a misnomer in both Vista and Win7. There's no longer a 'thumbnails' choice among explorer views. Thumbnails are created automatically for filetypes where a preview handler is registered, and they show up in most of the View modes (though not in details, thankfully).

The actual preview function for PDF (as opposed to a generated thumbnail) still does not work, but I'm not surprised. I do not remember if it ever worked in Vista, but my hunch is not. I do not by default keep previews on (slows things down), and in Vista it takes so ridiculously many steps to get to the preview button that you may as well have opened the file. In Windows 7 it's a one-click button on the toolbar.

The next time I boot to Vista (which is on another drive, and is 32-bit, and does have CS3 unlike my Win7 business drive, but which I almost never boot to any more), I'll refresh my memory by checking out whether 'preview' works there.