T9 External Program to Toolbar

[soothsayer99]

Using Thumbs 8: I want to have toolbar icons for external programs (e.g., Photoshop) as I did in Thumbs 7. The closest I can get is to add "Open With" as a toolbar choice. The program's Help option is useless on this.

[Daan van Rooijen]

> The closest I can get is to add "Open With" as a toolbar choice.

Close enough! Now open the Options | Customize dialog and while it is open, drag those programs from File | Open With to your toolbar.

[soothsayer99]

Thank you.
I have to apologize. I actually have version 9 installed. I don't know if the process has changed between version 8 and 9, but I want to guess that it hasn't, since the Help refers to the same "Options | Customize" instruction. Just the same, I can't find that as a clickable choice at any point in the toolbar editing. I have the program I want in the File, Open With option. I can access it using the File, Open With button I added to the toolbar, but I'm hoping to add other programs and have them right on the toolbar. I think it was reasonably intuitive in version 7, but I'm at a loss here. I clearly have to be doing something wrong.

[Daan van Rooijen]

> I actually have version 9 installed.

In that case, if you have a recent built (current is v9 sp2 b.3943), you can use File | Open With | Manage Programs | Tab:Programs to add programs to the  Open With section. From there, you can drag them onto a toolbar when Open | Customize is open. I don't know of a way to add them to the toolbar directly.

[soothsayer99]

I have build 3938, so I should probably update.

I did succeed in getting icons onto the toolbar. These are the steps I took:
Put the "Open With" button on the toolbar.
Open the Customize window for the toolbar.
Click the "Open With" button that was added to the toolbar.
Drag the icon you want onto the toolbar.

I had added another program to my "Open With" choices, and found that sometimes only one program icon appeared in the process. I tried the process a few times, and it didn't always seem to work the same way with each effort. I suspect there are bugs, and maybe an update will improve the process.

(I later found that I could get the icons onto the toolbar by using the Menu choice of File, Open With, with the Customize dialogue open.)

I'd like to edit the subject of the post to show it as T9, but I guess that's not possible after it has replies.

[Daan van Rooijen]

> (I later found that I could get the icons onto the toolbar by using the Menu choice of File, Open With, with the Customize dialogue open.)

Yes, that is what I tried to convey in my replies above.

> I'd like to edit the subject of the post to show it as T9, but I guess that's not possible after it has replies.

Done!

[soothsayer99]

Thank you, Daan, both for getting me in the right direction for adding the toolbar icons, and for changing the subject to T9 (someone else may find the discussion useful).

[Jean-Pierre]

I experienced similar problems with T9 build 3946:
1) The procedure to add external files to the tool bar is not at all intuitive: After activating the File|OpenWith|ManagePrograms... you have to reopen the same pull down menu again before you can move the file entries to the tool bar !
2) After placing the icon to the tool bar, the menue entry is gone in the list of external files (at least most of the times).
3) Reopening the list leads to erratic constellations in the list of external files.
4) Adding parameters to the external programs seems to be impossible (I finally edited the thumbs9.ini-file)
5) A feature to edit the invocation of the external program would be helpful (of course, again you can do this in thumbs9.ini - but not comfortable at all).

Looking forward to some improvements in the next version...

[soothsayer99]

Thanks for sharing your experience, since I sounds much like mine. The program icon-adding process is so odd that I'm not sure that I can duplicate it each time. At the very least, I'd have to go back to my own notes to do it, and not rely on intuition or the program's Help.

"Looking forward to some improvements in the next version..."

As for the next version, I'm not optimistic, based on my migration from Thumbs 7 to Thumbs 9. So far, improvements between those versions have eluded me. Maybe it's because of my fairly simple needs, and that newer features are of help to other users and I haven't needed them yet. For myself, I keep finding that features that worked well for me in T7 either do not work or are harder to do in T9. This toolbar icon creation is a perfect example. Not only is it harder to do, but it's not even working correctly: As far as I can tell, there is no hovertext available for the program icons as there was in T7 (unless it's a deleted feature). (Using ThumbsPlus Std 9 SP2 Build 3946)

I know I have to have a newer version of the program to operate properly in newer operating systems, but I would go back to Thumbs 7 immediately if that were practical. I don't know if I can deal with these messes by going to Thumbs 10.

David