Is there any extension for Chrome or Firefox to view local folder in thumbnail view?

Question

It’s quite easy to open local picture files with Chrome or Firefox: Right click → Open with ….

When I navigate from the address bar into the folder the image is in I get a page like Index of /Users/horst/Documents/pictures_folder/ and see all containing files listed here.

Is it possible to display these files in a thumbnail view in the browser? Is there any extension you know of?

Answer 1

There is unfortunately no extensions even with significant searching that offers this functionality. However depending on your setup there is a very good alternative:

H5AI - HTML5 Apache Index. The name is slightly inaccurate now as it has grown to support not only Apache but also lighttpd, nginx and Cherokee.

I don't see any mention of your OS so if you are not on Windows you'll have to adjust this slightly for your usage if this option will work for you. This option is secure and introduces only a very low system load. Feel free to use a different server if you have a preference of course; but I don't have any experience with the other supported servers so I can't comment on their speeds,

So install WAMPServer and then:

You'll need to enable directory listing and adjust the Apache VirtualHosts file (which will be located somewhere like this: Apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf).

The code you'll want will depend on what files you want to be listable in pretty mode; I'd suggest something like this (using Windows paths but just change the paths as desired/required): - I'll be refering to these throughout these instructions but they are example only really.

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "C:/Users/Nick/Desktop"
    ServerName www.desktop.loc
    ServerAlias desktop.loc
    <Directory "C:/Users/Nick/Desktop">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "C:/Users/Nick/Pictures"
    ServerName www.pictures.loc
    ServerAlias pictures.loc
    <Directory "C:/Users/Nick/Pictures">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

and add to your OS hosts files:

127.0.0.1 desktop.loc
127.0.0.1 www.desktop.loc
127.0.0.1 pictures.loc
127.0.0.1 www.pictures.loc

Then install H5AI and you're good to go and see prettyness - a preview of what you'll soon be seeing