Quick XnView Question

CheeseOnToast

I've been using ACDSee for years, but recently got a new job where we don't have it. Checked out the free options and XnView seems to fit the bill nicely, but I can't find a "always on top" option anywhere in it. Does it even exist? If not, any suggestions for an alternative (not Irfanview though...didn't like that one much).

SUNCHIRP

Tools > Options > Interface > Windows > Always On Top

CheeseOnToast

Doh! Thanks man, dunno how I missed that.

renderhjs

check out also these settings to speed things up and have it behave more like the old classic acdsee:

CheeseOnToast

Thank you, will have a tinker on Monday.

Toast

xnview is not free cheeseontoast. you'll have to purchase a license for commercial use, don't be a bad guy!

fullofclovers

Thanks for the performance tweak tips renderhjs. I'll try these when I get home. Although I find keeping the mouse wheel to zoom is much easier to work with.

renderhjs

you can hit '+' or '-' on the num block to resize, also '*' resets it to 100% size, '/' fits it to the window. I use those keys usually for that stuff - though in most cases i need to see images 1:1.

I myself don't need it as an editor,- its a pure viewer for me which is why I need it to be:
- snappy, fast - quick to start up / switch between thumbnail mode and image view
- minimalistic: don't need bloaty GUI experiments, needs to display images only

so naturally I map it to be use-able with my mouse alone, and use only the keyboard for additional stuff.


edit: as for the image view,- this is the way I like it:
just the image + windows menu + status bar

I think the tabs are a stupid idea because it takes a single key or click to go to the thumbnail view.
The other big buttons looks as if they were made for consumers (= not so expierenced computer users) - so I disable it because I don't need big buttons that waste space.

Asthane

renderhjs wrote: »

check out also these settings to speed things up and have it behave more like the old classic acdsee:

Any way to make it do proper smooth-panning like ACDsee? I've looked far and wide for something to replace it but never had any luck. ONCE I found a program that actually did it, but only one direction at a time and the rest of it was all 16-bit-era-ass anyway.

I even actually started writing a slick image viewer in OpenGL before figuring out just WHY so few people still use it these days. I fucked up the grid-placement algorithm anyway, so it's now a C#/DirectX project if I ever get around to it again.

So yeah, if XnView can do smooth panning and I've just never found it, that would be nice :P

renderhjs

whats smooth panning,- you mean holding left click and drag (if the image zoomed so that the image itself zoomed is bigger as the window) ?
Works for me very smooth - but I guess you mean perhaps something else?

Asthane

renderhjs wrote: »

whats smooth panning,- you mean holding left click and drag (if the image zoomed so that the image itself zoomed is bigger as the window) ?
Works for me very smooth - but I guess you mean perhaps something else?

I mean with the keyboard. It's actually incredibly vexing because Picasa for one actually has the capability (all of its functions are smoothly animated, even zooming), it just... doesn't have any keyboard shortcuts for panning. It has keys for flipping, black-and-white filter and emailing, but not the simple act of moving from one side of an image to the other. Kind of like Google Chrome. It does what it does beautifully, it's just not broad enough to be useful.

It's kind of sad really. Even ACDsee recently fell into the trap of assuming all of its users use fit-to-screen and only zoom in to compare identical photos and thus removed the pan-lock toggle in favor of always-on pan-lock. You now have to go through a whole rigamarole of zoom-lock+zoom+pan+unzoom just to get the damn thing to start at the top of successive images ¬_¬ The promised to sort of fix it... next year... but it just goes to show that some people don't even have a clue what people are using their program for (In the case of pan-lock, comics and such)

renderhjs

ah ok I get it now,- well yes I used to read many mangas and comics on screen as well years ago - but I used something else for that (manga, comic viewer? but thats almost 4-5 years ago).

well yes that indeed is not available or not well supported- maybe some of the other 'free' viewers come with that feature like irvanView, picasa, ...

Asthane

Well, the comics-and-pan-lock thing was just an aside. I consider smooth-panning a necessity for everything, it's just so much faster and easier on the hands than click-drag-click-drag over and over. Ah well.

ghib

I've used xnview for yonks now, it's great.

You can press M to quickly toggle to your Alpha channel. Is nice

renderhjs

wow good catch, I didn't knew the 'm' key yet.

some other nice ones I just read up:
[F4] = Open With Associated Editor (edit in photoshop)

in the thumbnails mode
[ESC] = stop thumbnail creation (if it hangs, like network drives or VPN connection)
[F7] = new folder (windows does not have something like this by default)


slightly offtopic:
recently I helped out my father with a online gallery, and I found this neat little php script (just 1 file):

http://sye.dk/sfpg/
it acts like XnView but on your server + you also don't need to install it. Just drop that php file into your gallery folder and it will create automatically just like xnView or Acdsee thumbnails of the images and folders. You can even browse through the images almost like the applications.
Its also easy to modify the colors and some xtra stuff if you feel to need to.