As demonstrated in the Content chapter, there are two "screens" in ThumbGrid: the "Album" screen and the "Gallery" screen.
The "Album" screen (example below) is what you see when using ThumbGrid "out of the box". It contains thumbnail images for the album currently in view in the SlideShowPro player. Clicking a thumbnail loads the related (larger) image in the SlideShowPro player. The Album screen is what's shown in the component live preview by default.
The "Gallery" screen (example below with "TItles") displays album preview thumbnails for all the albums in a slideshow. Clicking a thumbnail on the Gallery screen displays an Album screen of the album's content. The Gallery screen is out of view, and accessed with ActionScript through external buttons (as covered in the upcoming Navigation chapter). The Gallery screen can be shown at startup by setting the LAYOUT/Startup Screen parameter to "Gallery". This will also show the Gallery screen in the live preview, so you can switch that parameter back and forth to see both two screens on the stage of your movie.
LAYOUT/Spacing controls the pixel width of the area between each thumbnail. If thumbnails are sized using the "Fluid" option (see Sizing), the value of Spacing is uniformly applied. If using "Fixed," Spacing is used as the least acceptable value. That way ThumbGrid can balance the horizontal / vertical positioning for a uniform appearance. If you want to use "Fixed" but want to force your Spacing value, set the Fixed Grouping option (in either "Gallery" or "Album" screen settings) to "Off". Fixed thumbnails will then be uniformly spaced without any grouping.
ThumbGrid's thumbnails are loaded using the assigned order in the slideshow data it retrieves. This applies to album content as well as gallery content. By default, ThumbGrid starts at the top-left corner of the grid and moves left-to-right filling the thumbnail elements with images. You can change this left-to-right setting to top-to-bottom by modifying ThumbGrid's LAYOUT/Order parameter.
If there are more thumbnails than containers, thumbnails are grouped to control overflow, and continue to be drawn off-screen based on the value of LAYOUT/Direction. The user can then mouse over the component to view the additional groups, or you can provide your own buttons to control group viewing (as covered in the Navigation section).
The diagram below illustrates the relationship between Order and Direction. Overflow thumbnail groups are styled light gray.
Got thumbnails moving where you want them? Good. Let's move on to Images to look at the animation and effect options you can apply.