title: Windows file preview - similar to preview pane in explorer
body: <p>In Windows 7 (and I think Vista) the Explorer has a preview pane that lets you see the contents for some file types (MS Office, images, etc).  Is there any API available that allows you to access this functionality?</p>
  
  <p>I've been using the <a href="http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack" rel="noreferrer">WindowsAPICodePack</a> which has a ShellFile.Thumbnail, but this seems to only expose the thumbnail icon for file types that Explorer is able to view.  For instance, for a Word file it only displays the MS Word icon, where Explorer can actually preview the contents of the file.  It does work like I want for image types, but not for other types of files.</p>