IrfanView • Hacker News Board

Re: IrfanView

#21

Post by abulman » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:35 PM UTC

instagraham wrote: post #12

Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least

Agreed - I'm still using it everyday to view and do some minor editing (trimming and resizing pics). It, along with browsers, VLC, Putty, and SublimeText (and now also ObsidianMD) are the first things I will download to a new Windows PC.

Re: IrfanView

#22

Post by Ekaros » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

I wish I had corporate credit card... I could get myself copy for work...

Re: IrfanView

#23

Post by joshuaissac » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

allanrbo wrote: post #18

instagraham wrote: post #12

Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least

It made more sense to go through the effort to install IrfanView when there was no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000. Those only had MS Paint, and I think some versions only supported bmp files (no jpeg or gif). Windows XP had an ok image previewer.

> no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000

Windows has shipped with an image previewer since Windows ME. You can see it in this screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/windows98/comments/y1lj7x/winme_ima...

Re: IrfanView

#24

Post by jjbinx007 » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:42 PM UTC

yau8edq12i wrote: post #20

j45 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative?

The built-in viewer in windows is fine. I can't really think of a feature that it doesn't have that I need. Could you say why irfanview gets your vote?

The batch image manipulation features it offers are pretty handy. Plus you can press L or R to rotate an image and it has lossless rotate options as well.

Re: IrfanView

#25

Post by jajko » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

yau8edq12i wrote: post #20

j45 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternative?

The built-in viewer in windows is fine. I can't really think of a feature that it doesn't have that I need. Could you say why irfanview gets your vote?

The speed, plugins ecosystem, many more formats supported out of the box, crop being faster and more intuitive, often good enough auto adjust.

Irfan for images and vlc for video is the name of the game for me (and total commander for file management, the efficiency compared to simpler stuff is still in wow territory).

Re: IrfanView

#26

Post by earslap » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:44 PM UTC

joshuaissac wrote: post #23

allanrbo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made more sense to go through the effort to install IrfanView when there was no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000. Those only had MS Paint, and I think some versions only supported bmp files (no jpeg or gif). Windows XP had an ok image previewer.

> no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000 Windows has shipped with an image previewer since Windows ME. You can see it in this screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/windows98/comments/y1lj7x/winme_ima...

IIRC the killer "feature" that gave these previewers traction (ACDSee, IrfanView etc.) was that you could just preview a bunch of images in a folder using your arrow keys. So you'd just load one and use arrow keys to see the other images in the same folder. With the built-in options, you'd have to double click images one by one (and close their windows one by one) which was a horrible UX compared to what these provided.

Re: IrfanView

#27

Post by haunter » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

instagraham wrote: post #12

Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least

I use JPEGView nowadays https://github.com/sylikc/jpegview

Re: IrfanView

#28

Post by thih9 » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

instagraham wrote: post #12

Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least

Most people look at images via browser these days.

Re: IrfanView

#29

Post by lstamour » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:46 PM UTC

joshuaissac wrote: post #23

allanrbo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made more sense to go through the effort to install IrfanView when there was no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000. Those only had MS Paint, and I think some versions only supported bmp files (no jpeg or gif). Windows XP had an ok image previewer.

> no image previewer built into windows, in the days of Windows 95/98/ME/2000 Windows has shipped with an image previewer since Windows ME. You can see it in this screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/r/windows98/comments/y1lj7x/winme_ima...

That’s the “Preview pane” in explorer. It only supports the file types you could preview in explorer, it only “opens” the file currently selected in Explorer, and didn’t let you zoom in or inspect the image in any way that I recall. It was a plain preview that was supported (in ME) by the integrations Explorer had with Internet Explorer, I believe. Often installing IrfanView let you preview more file types in Explorer, and you could open more than one, display them full screen, edit them, resize them, and more…

Re: IrfanView

#30

Post by codetrotter » Sat, Mar 30, 2024, 5:48 PM UTC

instagraham wrote: post #12

Why are most comments referring to having used this in the past tense? I was under the impression that it was still the best image viewer in town, on Windows at least

For me it’s because I haven’t run Windows for ages