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IrfanView

irfanview.com

171–180 of 341 posts

Re: IrfanView

#172

Maybe I’ll get some hate for this, but years ago when I worked at a civil engineering firm this was the default image viewer IT had mapped every image file to open with - it was a nightmare! Every coworker I had (myself included) would constantly complain about the number of times they had to change to [literally anything else]. There were three distinct things I remember we all hated: 1. The image never opened full…

Dysfunction in the IT of civil engineering (and similar) professions is fairly common. I remember this exact phenomenon too - of Irfanview's default UI controls not suiting what the staff were used to. And the staff didn't need The Most Powerful Tool Under The Sun, they just wanted to view and zoom and browse, and a few other tools, using the keypresses and mouse movements they were used to from previous software.

And Irfanview could do those things in it's sleep with both hands tied, with a few simple config changes. But the dysfunction - often rooted in the minimal, grudging acknowledgement given to IT by (non-IT) old professions - led to a lot of half-assed setups where staff butted their heads against obstacles that were often a mere few clicks away from improvement, if only they'd known to put their attention there. But of course, they were too busy being civil engineers.

And if I may shoehorn another point in here : it's not as though AutoCAD and other such industry software comes with ready default settings. If you used those straight out of the box with no customisation for your own situation, you'd be in deep trouble.

Re: IrfanView

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still a part of the standard software I install on every new install.

As an only occasional windows user, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing such a list, maybe in a GitHub gist if you find yourself bored one day :)

Each their own, that's mine. Note that this is not a tech user or developper list, but the list of what I install on any new windows pc, including those at work etc ...

7zip (open any archive)

VLC (open any audio/video file)

IrfanView (+ the "all plugins" installer on the same page, open any picture file)

SumatraPDF (read PDFs)

Libreoffice (to open any office files)

NAPS2 (easy scan, and split/merge/... PDFs)

Ditto (give your clipboard a memory)

Everything (an instant file search that works)

TeraCopy (replace windows copy with queue, queues, add files to the queue instead of starting a second parallel copy, pause that works, ...)

Powertoys (so many to list ... mass rename file easily, screen ruler, text extractor ...)

If it's appropriate : Qbittorent (clean torrent client)

Nvidia graphic card ? NVCleaninstall, so you can install just the clean driver you need

Windows 10 or 11 ? O&O Shut Up (to disable all the telemetry and onedrive in one click, there are plenty alternatives but I sort of like this one)

Windows 11 ? ExplorerPatcher to remove suggestions in the start menu and the new and terrible castrated contextual menu

And of course your browser of choice and extensions

In ten minutes you have a computer that feels much more smart and usable. There are plenty of great software out there, but I feel like many what to install lists are very topical or include software you won't use in many cases or once every 6 months, so this is my short list of what you will use essentially every time you use the computer.

Re: IrfanView

#174
I still use IrfanView to this day, all the way back since mid 90'ies. It's a fantastic piece of software with a great legacy and I wouldn't trade it for any modern photo software. So snappy and functional, works like a charm. With the plugins added to it you can open literally any image.

Re: IrfanView

#175

4MB to download the installer, back in the days when programs just did the thing they did and didn't include runtimes for entire virtual environments.

But what if you want to display Full HD video in the image viewer from an URL? Wouldn't you need Electron for that? Also I was under the impression just the DLLs for all the image formats would be over 4 MB. I wonder how large is it uncompressed.

FYI, Irfanview might not be able to pull it from an url, but it's playing ful hd video just fine although I wouldn't use it for that.

Re: IrfanView

#177
IrfanView configured to open with space bar in WindowsCommander (as TotalCommander was called at the time) for a quick view. Name a more iconic duo.

Re: IrfanView

#178
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get it on macOS?

If it's for non-commercial use, you might find this a spritual equivalent, cross-platform: https://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/

This comment is baffling. Just so you know, the IrfanView license requires commercial users to pay for a license, just like XnView does. Apparently that's... bad?

Re: IrfanView

#180

IrfanView is great, but I'm curious, why is it on top of HN today of all days? Was there something significant happening?

It happens every now and then. Could be as simple as nostalgia.

Like Delphi, FreePascal and Lazarus, though less often for those three than for IrfanView, and those three get a good number of sneers by modern ignoramuses, each time. The joke is on them, due to the amount of late night and weekend work (unpaid, often) that many of them have to pull, and tamely accept and try to justify, to save their egos and paychecks.

"The emperor has no clothes" kind of thing ...

And nowadays, layoffs, too ...

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