Suggestion: choose a collection’s thumbnail from an existing notebook

Scenario: I want to select an existing notebook’s preview as the collection thumbnail.

Currently I can:

  • go to that notebook, remove it from the collection, add it again
  • use the inspector to find that thumbnail, download then file then re-upload it as the collection’s thumbnail

What I would like:

  • select a representative notebook that “sticks” as the collection’s thumbnail definition, even when I add more notebooks to the collection.
3 Likes

Since the addition of custom preview images collections can also have custom thumbnails:
image
Would assigning the thumbnail twice (once to the notebook, once to the collection) work for you?

Alternatively you could copy the notebook’s preview image to the clipboard and paste it into the collection’s image dialog (probably resulting in some minor quality degradation).

Would assigning the thumbnail twice (once to the notebook, once to the collection) work for you?

it’s what I do now— what I meant is that once you’re in the “Set preview image” dialog, it would be great to be able to select a notebook from the list, rather than having to deal with finding its thumbnail, downloading and re-uploading a file, which is cumbersome.

Re: your second suggestion, is there a simple way to copy the existing image straight from the observable listings (without going into the browser inspector)?

Must the reference to the notebook be maintained (i.e. notebook thumb updates → collection thumb updates)? Or would a “set from notebook” option suffice? (Perhaps it could be made so that one can paste a notebook URL instead of an image.)

None that I know of, unfortunately.