How to get a Windows File Explorer Wi-Fi connection to Android to show photo thumbnails?

[Roy Tremblay]

It may be impossible, but in case it's possible, does anyone here know how
to get a Windows File Explorer Wi-Fi connection to Android to show photo
thumbnails?
https://s3.postimg.org/9xifx4mgz/android_icons.jpg

When I open the Windows File Explorer to the FTP URI on my Android phone
over the LAN, I can browse the entire file system of Android from / onward,
but there are no thumbnails viewed.

On Android, when I browse the file system, there are thumbnails, so,
Android thumbnails must be done differently than Windows thumbnails.

Any idea if it's possible to generate Windows-like thumbnails on Android so
that when we browse the Android file system from Windows, we can see
thumbnails instead of just file names?
https://s3.postimg.org/9xifx4mgz/android_icons.jpg

[Paul]

https://superuser.com/questions/155096/an-ftp-client-with-image-thumbnails

"Unless you have very special server support, you can't generate
the thumbnails or edit the files without first downloading them.

FTP doesn't allow you to do this as part of the protocol.
"

Presenting the information in a "pretty" way, is why
we have web servers. So at least in this "remote" interface
case, we need the server side to support these ideas, rather
than the client side. The client side is not allowed to
do anything which is "not scalable". As that thread above discusses,
if the client has to download the entire site to generate thumbnails
for everything, that isn't a scalable idea. And it defeats the
purpose of using thumbnails, if it forces "downloading everything
in sight".

However, if the server side is actually an HTTP server, that allows
a more intelligent server presentation. But it would also ruin client
integration on the client side.

This is also the reason that Indexing of remote servers, has to be
done differently than Indexing of local file systems. Because of the
scaling issues it might cause. Everything has to be done in a way
that doesn't overload the server with baloney.

Paul

[Roy Tremblay]

Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> actually wrote:

> FTP doesn't allow you to do this as part of the protocol.

Thanks Paul for finding out that FTP doesn't allow .thumbnails to be
viewed, but, let's remember it's Windows File Explorer which is viewing the
the files, so, doesn't Windows File Explorer have the capability to
understand its own thumbnail views?

As a test, I opened up two Windows File Explorer windows.
- The first was opened to Windows, with some files that had thumbnails
- The second was a copy of those files, copied to Android
https://s1.postimg.org/fe2w3s2jz/icons.jpg

As you can see, Windows can see the thumbnails when the files are viewed in
Windows File Explorer but only for files that are on Windows.

And yet, Android does have the capability to show thumbnails all by itself:
https://s3.postimg.org/m7lfwtj7n/dcim.jpg

The question is why Windows File Explorer can see the thumbnails only when
the "test" directory was actually on Windows, but not when that very same
"test" directory was copied to Android and viewed in Windows File Explorer.
https://s1.postimg.org/4shhjd17j/thumbnails.jpg

Is there a way to convert Android thumbnails to Windows thumbnails?

[Andy Burns]

Roy Tremblay wrote:

> does anyone here know how
> to get a Windows File Explorer Wi-Fi connection to Android to show photo
> thumbnails?

It's not an Android issue, it's a Windows issue ...

When you browse *any* FTP server from Windows Explorer you don't get
thumbnails, just an icon for the file extension, no preview pane either
and fairly minimal info in the details pane, it's just the way it is.

[Lucifer Morningstar]

Try Teamviewer.

[Lucifer Morningstar]

On Wed, 02 Aug 2017 21:43:21 -0400, Paul <nos...@needed.invalid>
wrote:

Teamviewer.

> Paul

[Roy Tremblay]

Thanks for explaining that the lack of ability to see Android thumbnails on
Windows File Explorer is an FTP-protocol issue.

So maybe it is impossible to see Android thumbnails on Windows before the
file is copied over from Android to Windows.

However ...

Given that various "shell extensions" can be (optionally) loaded when
FileZilla is installed, one might think that there could be a Windows shell
extension for FTP software (such as FileZilla or WinSCP) which would
display thumbnails.

Certainly FileZilla FTP client installs (by default) a drag-and-drop
Windows Shell Extension, so why not a "thumbnail viewer" shell extension?

As a compromise, I noticed today that FileZilla on Windows does at least
have the ability to right-click on the Android file (before you bring it
over to Windows) so that you can "edit/view" that file, which, essentially,
does a background copy and then opens the file in the default Windows
editor so you can see what it looks like in a quick file-by-file check:
https://s4.postimg.org/fg6owuphp/filezillaedit.jpg

So far, that efficient "edit/view" selection is the closest thing we have
to actually seeing what the JPEG file contains before it's copied over from
Android to Windows over the LAN.

[Andy Burns]

Roy Tremblay wrote:

> Thanks for explaining that the lack of ability to see Android thumbnails on
> Windows File Explorer is an FTP-protocol issue.

When explorer is displaying the contents of a windows folder, there's an
expectation that anything else updating the contents of the folder will
update the thumbnails cache file.

But if it's an FTP location, it could be updated by a non-windows
system, so there's no guarantee that a thumbnail file would even exist,
or be up to date, so rather than downloading every image to generate the
thumbnails, it's easiest to not bother.

[Big Al]

The moment you copied the files to windows, the folder and images and
subsequently thumbnail views all became managed by Windows since the
files are now on a Windows machine and no longer on an Android machine.

[Mayayana]

"Roy Tremblay" <rmbla...@nlnet.nl> wrote

| Thanks Paul for finding out that FTP doesn't allow .thumbnails to be
| viewed, but, let's remember it's Windows File Explorer which is viewing
the
| the files, so, doesn't Windows File Explorer have the capability to
| understand its own thumbnail views?
|

It's not so much an FTP problem per se. Paul's
quoted snippet explained it pretty well. To generate
a thumbnail, something has to load the whole image
and create a resized version. It's very work-intensive.
And it can't be done without loading the original,
whether that's 50 KB or 20 MB.

The convenience is deceptive. What you're viewing
is simply a file list, perhaps rendered to look like a
Windows folder. Explorer doesn't "see" any of those
images.

If thumbnail generation is done by Windows Explorer
then Windows has to have the original images. As Paul
noted, it would be a bit silly to import the whole data
load in order to create thumbnails, in order to see if
you want to import any data. You might just as well
copy all the images over to begin with.

You have to remember that all of this is just data
transfer. Likewise with a webpage: We talk about
visiting a website, but really it's nothing like that.
The browser calls an IP address and says, "Please
give me your index.html." The server sends that. The
browser then parses it and calls again to get the files
that make up the webpage: "Please give me pic.gif,
pic2.gif and styles.css." The server sends those.
Eventually the browser has the whole thing and puts
it together, following the instructions in the HTML
and CSS, to show you a "homepage".

In theory you could have thumbnails in http, using
script to call the server. Server-side software could
then generate the thumbnails and write their links
to a webpage dynamically. But that's not a protocol
issue. The only difference is that you can run script, and
webpages are very flexible, while FTP is simpler. But
http does not "enable thumbnails" by design. Explorer is
not accessing the image files either way. And it's not
generating thumbnails in the http example. In the http
example it's just receiving a webpage full of thumbnails,
sent by the server.

There's often similar confusion when people access
ZIP files. Microsoft made it very convenient to see
the files as though they're in a folder. In their attempt
to make ZIPs easy to use they created massive confusion,
because the files are not in a folder, on disk. They're
still part of the ZIP, compressed.
It's *very* difficult to explain to people that the folder
they see is not really a folder. It's only a representation
of the embedded file list that's in a ZIP file. So people
open a file from a ZIP and try to email it or resave it,
then get confused when it doesn't work. Microsoft's
attempt to make the access transparent just made
things worse.

What you could possibly do would be to install
a thumbnail generator on Android and batch-convert
your images, maybe creating a folder in the same
location. Then you could copy over only the thumbnails
for viewing. (Explorer still won't be able to render them
on Android because that would still mean copying over
the files themselves first.) You might even find a program
that will act as a "super Exporer" and show you thumbnails,
but again, all the images have to be loaded in order to
achieve that, so they all have to be copied over, so why
not just copy them over in the first place?

[Mayayana]

A further complication which might get mentioned here....

If your images are all JPG and they all have embedded
thumbnails, you could extract those rather than load
and resize the whole image. Explorer probably does
that when possible. That saves the trouble of the very
work-intensive resizing of large images. The calculations
required to dither a 20 MB image down to a few KB are
massive. But even extracting thumbnails still requires
reading a copy of the file. So either the Android side
has to extract thumbnail files and Explorer has to import
them, or Explorer has to load the remote files in order
to extract the thumbnails itself.

Another way to put it: You see a restaurant menu.
If you want to try a sample of the menu items then
someone is going to have to cook those dishes, and
you're going to have to visit the restaurant. Maybe
they'll deliver, but the cooking and the transfer of
food can't be avoided if you want to actually taste
the dish.

[Roy Tremblay]

Mayayana <maya...@invalid.nospam> actually wrote:

> It's not so much an FTP problem per se. Paul's
> quoted snippet explained it pretty well. To generate
> a thumbnail, something has to load the whole image
> and create a resized version. It's very work-intensive.
> And it can't be done without loading the original,
> whether that's 50 KB or 20 MB.

Yes. But. The thumbnail on Android already exists.
https://s3.postimg.org/m7lfwtj7n/dcim.jpg

It's just that the Android .thumnail is in Android thumbnail format and not
in a Windows thumbnail format.

So the hope is that an Android-thumbnail-to-Windows-thumbnail conversion
exists.

> If thumbnail generation is done by Windows Explorer
> then Windows has to have the original images. As Paul
> noted, it would be a bit silly to import the whole data
> load in order to create thumbnails, in order to see if
> you want to import any data. You might just as well
> copy all the images over to begin with.

Exactly!

> You have to remember that all of this is just data
> transfer. Likewise with a webpage: We talk about
> visiting a website, but really it's nothing like that.
> The browser calls an IP address and says, "Please
> give me your index.html." The server sends that. The
> browser then parses it and calls again to get the files
> that make up the webpage: "Please give me pic.gif,
> pic2.gif and styles.css." The server sends those.
> Eventually the browser has the whole thing and puts
> it together, following the instructions in the HTML
> and CSS, to show you a "homepage".

True that.

The FTP protocol is being used with FileZilla or WinSCP or even with
Windows File Explorer, and then the client (FileZilla, WinSCP, or Windows
File Explorer) 'reconstructs' the data.

> There's often similar confusion when people access
> ZIP files. Microsoft made it very convenient to see
> the files as though they're in a folder. In their attempt
> to make ZIPs easy to use they created massive confusion,
> because the files are not in a folder, on disk. They're
> still part of the ZIP, compressed.

Good analogy!

> What you could possibly do would be to install
> a thumbnail generator on Android and batch-convert
> your images, maybe creating a folder in the same
> location.

Exactly what I was asking for!
Does such an Android-to-Windows .thumbnail conversion exist?

[Roy Tremblay]

Mayayana <maya...@invalid.nospam> actually wrote:

> If your images are all JPG and they all have embedded
> thumbnails, you could extract those rather than load
> and resize the whole image.

You bring up a good point which is that there are actually TWO thumbnails
for each JPEG image on Android.
The Android .thumbnail folder (https://s3.postimg.org/m7lfwtj7n/dcim.jpg)
The EXIF thumbnail image (https://s1.postimg.org/4shhjd17j/thumbnails.jpg)

I found this out when I edited the sample test photos, where the thumbnail
in the Windows File Explorer, even copied over to Windows via the FTP
protocol, still showed the *origninal* thumbnail image and not the edited
image.
https://s1.postimg.org/fe2w3s2jz/icons.jpg

> Windows File Explorer probably does

> that when possible. That saves the trouble of the very
> work-intensive resizing of large images.

It may be impossible, but the goal is for the Windows File Explorer to
"recognize" the thumbnails that are on Android over the WiFi LAN either by
a Windows File Explorer shell extension that recognizes the Android
.thumbnail format, or by a conversion that is run on Android that converts
the Android .thumbnail format into a Windows File Explorer .thumbnail
format.

The other option is for Windows File Explorer (or the Windows FileZilla
client) to read the EXIF thumbnails that you mentioned are also in each
JPEG photo.
https://s4.postimg.org/fg6owuphp/filezillaedit.jpg

> The calculations
> required to dither a 20 MB image down to a few KB are
> massive. But even extracting thumbnails still requires
> reading a copy of the file. So either the Android side
> has to extract thumbnail files and Explorer has to import
> them, or Explorer has to load the remote files in order
> to extract the thumbnails itself.

Exactly!

This has probably never been done before, but that's why I asked the
experts here.

[Roy Tremblay]

Big Al <Bi...@invalid.com> actually wrote:

> The moment you copied the files to windows, the folder and images and
> subsequently thumbnail views all became managed by Windows since the
> files are now on a Windows machine and no longer on an Android machine.

Exactly.

On Windows, using Windows File Explorer, all I want to see are the
thumbnails that are on Android, using Windows File Explorer.

[Big Al]

And that's the point. Once on Windows, Windows takes over and does the
right job. As you copied, it was probably making thumbnails as it
went, that or when you opened the folder.

[Frank Slootweg]

Paul <nos...@needed.invalid> wrote:
[...]

> https://superuser.com/questions/155096/an-ftp-client-with-image-thumbnails
>
> "Unless you have very special server support, you can't generate
> the thumbnails or edit the files without first downloading them.
>
> FTP doesn't allow you to do this as part of the protocol.
> "
>
> Presenting the information in a "pretty" way, is why
> we have web servers. So at least in this "remote" interface
> case, we need the server side to support these ideas, rather
> than the client side. The client side is not allowed to
> do anything which is "not scalable". As that thread above discusses,
> if the client has to download the entire site to generate thumbnails
> for everything, that isn't a scalable idea. And it defeats the
> purpose of using thumbnails, if it forces "downloading everything
> in sight".
>
> However, if the server side is actually an HTTP server, that allows
> a more intelligent server presentation. But it would also ruin client
> integration on the client side.

This brings me to a - rather far-fetched - suggestion for 'Roy':

Try if a switch from FTP server/client to WebDAV server/client can
solve this thumbnails 'problem'.

- (For example) On Android:
"WebDAV Server"
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theolivetree.webdavserver>

- Ideally, you create a Network Drive on the Windows side ('Map network
drive' in File Explorer) with something like this in the 'Folder:' field:

http://192.168.0.124:8080

(WebDAV Server will tell you the IP address and port number for your
situation.)

I could not get this to work (Windows could not find the WebDAV
server), so I tried an alternative (to 'Map network drive'):

'NetDrive', free for 1 Network Drive, <http://www.netdrive.net/>.

- With NetDrive, I could map Network Drive S: to URL
http://192.168.0.124 and Port 8080 and do a Connect.
That showed the content of the phone's SD card as Windows drive S:.

N.B. NetDrive is not the final solution, but is just used for this
proof-of-concept (because 'Map network drive' didn.t work (for me)).

Hope this helps.

[John McGaw]

I don't access my Nexus from Windows via Wi-Fi but, over USB, thumbnails
show just fine just as if the files in DCIM were local. The thumbnails on
Windows don't depend on what is on the other end -- I can just a readily
see thumbnail from my Drobo or Notebook which are both Linux-based devices
using Windows Explorer. Again, I'm not using Wi-Fi for those either, both
being on the wired gigabit network. I can't imagine why Wi-Fi would act
differently than USB or Ethernet.

Can you just connect the phone to the Windows machine via USB one time to
see if it acts differently?

[Mayayana]

"Roy Tremblay" <rmbla...@nlnet.nl> wrote

| Exactly what I was asking for!
| Does such an Android-to-Windows .thumbnail conversion exist?

You might try posting one of the files. If it's some
kind of cache library it might not work, but if
each thumbnail is a separate file then the extension
might just be a cutesy way to label a small JPG.

[Roy Tremblay]

We completely understand each other, which I summarize as three things:
1. Photos on Android are viewed by Android the "Android .thumbnail way"
2. Photos on Windows are viewed on Windows the "Windows .thumbnail way"
3. When you mix one with the other, you no longer see thumbnails.

I got that. That was the original question. How to change that.

I don't really need Android to view Windows .thumbnails, but the hope is
that someone knows of a way for Windows to make use of Android .thumbnails.

[Roy Tremblay]

Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> actually wrote:

> When explorer is displaying the contents of a windows folder, there's an
> expectation that anything else updating the contents of the folder will
> update the thumbnails cache file.
>
> But if it's an FTP location, it could be updated by a non-windows
> system, so there's no guarantee that a thumbnail file would even exist,
> or be up to date, so rather than downloading every image to generate the
> thumbnails, it's easiest to not bother.

I think we agree completely that Android does .thumbnails the "Android way"
while Windows does .thumbnails the "Windows way".

Hence, when Android is viewing Windows files over the LAN, it won't
understand the Windows .thumbnail way, and more to the point, when Windows
is viewing Android files over the LAN, Windows won't understand the
"Android way" - and - worse - the FTP protocol has no way of "sending over"
the Android way to Windows anyway.

So, I think, as stated in the first line of the OP:
"It may be impossible, but in case it's possible, does anyone here

know how to get a Windows File Explorer Wi-Fi connection to Android
to show photo thumbnails?"

I admit I don't really understand the Android .thumnail way nor do I
understand the Windows .thumbnail way, so I'm not a guy who can solve this.

Even worse, I *tried* a few times to copy and move the Android .thumbnails
directory over to Windows and vice versa, and now my Android phone will
take pictures, but no thumnails show up! :)

Serves me right for experimenting!
Luckily, I can factory reset the phone, but the takeaway is this:

1. I don't think anyone has ever asked this question anywhere before.
2. I don't think anyone understands the "Android .thumbnail way".
3. But even so, it's impossible.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2017-08-03 13:19, Roy Tremblay wrote:
> Andy Burns <use...@andyburns.uk> actually wrote:
>
>>> does anyone here know how
>>> to get a Windows File Explorer Wi-Fi connection to Android to show photo
>>> thumbnails?
>>
>> It's not an Android issue, it's a Windows issue ...
>>
>> When you browse *any* FTP server from Windows Explorer you don't get
>> thumbnails, just an icon for the file extension, no preview pane either
>> and fairly minimal info in the details pane, it's just the way it is.
>
> Thanks for explaining that the lack of ability to see Android thumbnails on
> Windows File Explorer is an FTP-protocol issue.

No, it is not an FTP-protocol issue at all. It is a Windows Explorer issue.

Windows explorer may not know that it is looking at an Android folder,
nor that there is a thumbnails info already there. It wants to use its
own format of thumbnails, as does any other software.


Yesterday I was looking at photos in my phone via FTP, using several
Linux file explorers. And they did display thumbnails just fine, but
they had to be generated, meaning that they had to download all the photos.

I simply had to enable a setting on each file browser telling to show
thumbnails on remote filesystems, and to limit the size of the file for
which this would be done to a reasonable value (if photo is bigger, it
doesn't generate the thumbnail).

Possibly Windows Explorer has a similar setting somewhere.


Note that it is possible that any file explorer doing this may store the
thumbnail information as another folder in the phone, using more space.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Lucifer Morningstar]

Have you tried Teamviewer?