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OliverTwist · Aug 13, 2007, 10:38 PM

Hello,

Does anyone know if the Quick Look feature will be available to developers to use in their own apps? I understand that we can make plugins to let it read new file formats, but I'm interested in actually using it in my app to preview files.

Thanks.

Chuckit · Aug 14, 2007, 11:09 AM

That would be under NDA.

OliverTwist · Aug 14, 2007, 12:03 PM

Damn, forgot about that. Thanks anyway.

OliverTwist · Oct 16, 2007, 02:27 PM

Well it's been two months now, and Apple has just announced all major features, so is the NDA still active? I'm dying to know if I'll be able to implement Quick Look in an app.

EDIT: Just to give one example of possible usage, imagine Transmit (or other FTP clients) using Quick Look to preview files on either your local drive or web server.

Chuckit · Oct 16, 2007, 04:04 PM

Sorry, the NDA hasn't been lifted yet. Folks under NDA can't say anything that isn't already public information until the 26th.

OliverTwist · Oct 16, 2007, 05:48 PM

No problem, I'll wait until next Friday. I'm not even sure if this is something beta testers would know but I figured someone might have stumbled upon it when looking through the new APIs. Thanks.

King Bob On The Cob · Oct 26, 2007, 02:50 AM

Legit copies are in people's hands. The NDA is over. Common, spill the beans now.

OliverTwist · Oct 26, 2007, 05:47 PM

Yeah, if anyone knows the answer, please let us know. I'm getting my copy of Leopard from Amazon so unfortunately it isn't coming until next week.

Chuckit · Oct 26, 2007, 10:08 PM

The documentation on creating a Quick Look client still kind of sucks, but it looks like the answer is yes. There's definitely a function for generating a Quick Look thumbnail, and the documentation suggests that you can do the same for previews, though it doesn't say exactly how. I was hoping they'd spruce up the documentation for release. I'll poke around more later and let you know what I find.

OliverTwist · Oct 27, 2007, 01:06 AM

Sounds excellent, thanks! Please share whatever else you find. Can't wait to get my copy on Monday.

OliverTwist · Oct 29, 2007, 01:34 PM

I asked Matt Gemmel about this and he points to QLThumbnailImageCreate() for requesting Quick Look-generated previews of files. I'm still not sure if this is only small thumbnails, or the larger previews Finder gives in a HUD when spacebar is pressed. I'm assuming that it's both.

MattGemmell · 01:45 PM

Hi folks, I noticed this link in my server logs, and thought I'd clarify about QLThumbnailCreate().

One of its parameters is a size (so you can make the preview as large as you like), and another parameter is a list of options, including one to specify whether it should be an "icon" (i.e. whether it should have a drop-shadow, document border, page-curl and such rendered into it). Incidentally, the default is not to add the icon decoration to the preview.

So, you can use that function for either Finder-style icon thumbnails or larger previews of actual content, as shown in the Quick Look panel.

Chuckit · Oct 29, 2007, 01:49 PM

Thanks for the clarification, Matt. But that doesn't work for multimedia or non-visual content, does it? Also, if you look at the Delicious Library previews for example, the preview shows a lot more than the thumbnail.

What's weird, though, is that the docs seem to suggest there's some way to get a standard Quick Look window. And there is a QLPreviewCreate function, but it's not in the public headers. Maybe it just didn't get finished.