Displaying icon of picture file

[DFarris]

I would like to display the icon of a picture file in a split panel, where each panel split contains a preview of what the picture file contains, much like you would see in the Windows Explorer folder of picture files set to display icons. I have tried using a picturebox loaded with the associated picture, and that works, but seems to be very sluggish and memory intensive. Got to be a better way!

Is there a way to embed Windows Explorer within a panel?

Thanks,
David

[dday9]

How are you loading the picture in the picturebox? Are you creating a bitmap and setting the image that way, or are you setting the picturebox's picturelocation? Because either way should take to terribly long.

[DFarris]

Yes, at this point, I am setting the picturelocation of the picturebox. I have created a control that contains a picturebox and a label to hold the filename. When I select a folder, I find all the image files, add the usercontrol to the form and then populate the usercontrol with the picture file info. This sounds reasonable to me, but takes a long time and very sluggish when scrolling the form.

I was thinking it might be better to use something like the datagridview but I am not familiar with it either. Any ideas?

[dday9]

When you say sluggish, do you mean that it flickers alot and takes a while to scroll? If so, then try setting the form's doublebuffer to true. I think that will help out tremendously. Btw, my name's David too!!!

-Edit-
Also if all you want to do is store the file's image location without having to use a lable, you could set the tag property to the file location. That's if you don't really want the label.

[dunfiddlin]

Oh. If only there was a VB control that did exactly what the file panel in Explorer does and had its own list of images (small or large) you could add to and would display in different modes like Large Icon or SmallIcon or Tile. I wonder what you'd call a mystical control like that? It would be like a viewer but with listing capabilities. ViewList, perhaps?

No, you're right, far too clever for the guys at MS ever to have though of. Shame though. Just think what you could do with one of those!