I’m not sure, whether this is a known issue or a bug. I use Blender 2.48 and can not get any thumbnail previews for any materials or other images in .blend files. The Image Browser does show other image files elsewhere on the computer, but as soon as I get into a .blend file, all I get are white sheets with the names… Thanks for your help!
In order to get material previews to show up, you need to go into the Preferences under Auto Save and enable the Save Preview Images button. Once you do that and save the .blend file that you want to see these materials in, then you’ll be able to use the Image Browser to preview materials.
I actually enabled that button and saved that as part of my User Defaults (Ctrl+U) so I always get that behavior.
Thanks for the reply, but this does not change anything for me, still get no preview…
Are all of your files .gif files?
I’m actually running into a similar problem. The image browser will display all of my JPEG and BMP files, but will not display any GIF files. Is this expected behavior?