Question about Thumbnails and Galleries for Items

If you use LIST VIEW (and in some cases News View) and disable the Cover Image for the Item Sidebar, then you can make thumbnails as small as you want. If you use Grid View, News View II, Tile View or Article View, then you need to make sure you create a large enough thumbnail for those containers or it will look like CRAP. Article View can be used without images, but if you do use image, same thing apply's, you will need largish thumbs or the layouts will look like crap.

Showcase implements 3 attachment handlers (one for items, one for comments and one for reviews). Comments and Reviews implement pretty much exactly how threads implement the attachment handler cept that they limit the attachment type to just image (same as the XFRM does for uploading attachments to a Resource). For Items, its an entirely different ball game. First, Showcase (like XFMG) creates its own thumbnails as it needs LARGE thumbs and specific dimensions. I've also got a comprehensive permissions system and cover image system built in.

That addon that you posted is developed specific for THREADS. It doesn't have anything to do with the attachment system or any other addons. The reference made about Widgets refers to THREAD based widgets.

Set a lower "Showcase Thumbnail Quality" setting for thumbnails so the file sizes are smaller. Then use LIST view so that you can set the thumbnail size to something much smaller. Any viewing of images would then have to be done via the built in gallery's.

Those are dynamically created on the fly by the Gallery JS script (using the full size images). That happens on every page load (those thumbs are not stored anywhere). Both the Showcase Gallery and FotoRama Gallery do this.

 

Yes. Each time you change the size setting, you have to rebuild the Showcase Thumbnails (not XenForo Thumbnails, but Showcase Thumbnails).