Tag: viewer

  • Freeware Shorts: Imagine (Image Viewer)

    Freeware Shorts: Imagine (Image Viewer)

    Imagine (Version: 1.0.8 as of this post) is a full featured image viewer and thumbnail browser. It features rotate, flip, negative and other common effects and filters. Support for plugins and command line parameters as well. It also supports animation creation, a feature less common in image viewers.

    Imagine

    Via Tools —> Animation Factory one can create animations.  It supports setting delays between frames, setting transparency, resizing the animation, fliping frames horizontally or vertically and even manipulating the colors of the images. It is also possible to extract frames from an existing animation.

    Another feature often missing or incomplete in many image viewers is to not only be able to open archive files but to be able to get proper thumbnail views of the images inside. Imagine supports this in ZIP, RAR, 7Z, ALZ, HV3, CBZ, CBR and CB7 formats and in my tests supports them well.

    Imagine supports EXIF data and their retention when re-saving images. Shell extension support is here too. Via Options —> Shell Extension the preview of an image will be available when right clicking it.

    Imagine can create multiple page images, do batch conversions, show slideshows and take screenshots. The latter was a bit different as it somehow proceeded to take many screenshots, not just one, when the trigger method was set to ‘automatically after X seconds’, it thus behaved as ‘automatically after every X seconds’.

    Unicode and 64-bit versions are also available, it should run on all Windows versions and doesn’t write to the registry.

    Imagine is highly recommended.

  • Binverse Provides Powerful Usenet Access, Review And Giveaway

    Binverse Provides Powerful Usenet Access, Review And Giveaway

    Comment below to win one of two 50GB premium accounts from Binverse!

    Binverse is a usenet solution that offers a powerful method of viewing and downloading usenet group messages.

    The story of usenet goes back to the early days of the world wide web before the internet was the one we are familiar with today. These groups were often accessed within a browser (Netscape for example) and were one of the earlier means of sharing news. This expanded to contain all sorts of files. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offered access as part of internet service but this practice has gradually stopped in many parts of the world. Today programs like Binverse are the more common way of accessing usenet groups.

    Binverse

    Binverse offers a secure SSL protected access to many (~100,000 groups) usenet groups and unlike some similar services Binverse retains a huge chunk of data (up to 800TB) so it does not discard content as quickly as some others. Binverse also does not limit user download speeds, in the case of this giveaway 50GB of non-expiring downloads are made available to use.

    Binverse has a built preview feature for checking files before downloading images, audio or videos to your computer. Its strength is the easy way one can search for messages of different kinds. After downloading Binverse you log in using the username and password that will be provided when you sign up for the service or get access using this giveaway. The top left of the program provides the search function and is probably the first action to take after signing in. One can configure search type and change the download location and change a few other settings using the buttons in the top right of the program. After search results show up one can view the contents of a folder (if there are multiple files listed in the Files column) by right clicking or double clicking on the item. Using the aforementioned preview or the slideshow function before downloading is another very convenient feature of Binverse.

    Binverse is available for both Mac and Windows.

  • Freeware Shorts: Imagina

    Freeware Shorts: Imagina

    Imagina

    Imagina (Version: A 1.7 build as of this post) calls itself the next generation image viewer and editing tool or ‘virtual lightbox’. Its interface features the Microsoft Office style ribbon. Images can be opened using the camera icon in the top left corner and then any one folder viewed in one of several ways. One viewing method is the 3D effect, an attractive if somewhat CPU intensive way of navigating image folders.
    Imagina also features such tools as noise reduction, support for tags, flip, resize and straighten among others. A ‘period style’ feature is a slightly enhanced sepia and black and white effect. Imagina also does a bit more than usual in the colour editing department in terms of its brightness, hue and saturation controls.
    As image viewers go Imagina is more advanced and does a bit more than one might expect. Look for its additional features including playing movies at http://www.planetimagina.com/about.html

  • Makagiga: Multi-Featured Free Open Source Utility

    Makagiga: Multi-Featured Free Open Source Utility

    Makagiga

    Makagiga has a simple interface where it attempts to provide an everything at your finger tips type of experience. It comes with widgets to populate its window. The widgets include To-do, Notes, Calendar and Internet Search. Additional widgets can be downloaded (Edit—>Get More Widgets) and include the likes of a Digital Clock and Countdown timer, among others. Somewhat confusing it also supports plugins and no real distinction is made with its widgets. A separate menu (Tools—>Add or Remove Plugins) and window is used to download and use plugins such as an advanced text editor but then to get even more plugins one can click the Get More Plugins link on this same Add or Remove Plugins window. These additional plugins include such things as a chart generator, a Wolfram|Alpha query and others.

    The ability to subscribe to RSS feeds comes already built-in and therefore Makagiga can be used as a news feed as well.

    Makagiga requires Java and Windows XP at a minimum. Separate portable (use the run-portable.exe file) and Linux versions are available as well.

  • 5DFly Free Photo Editing And Viewer

    5DFly Free Photo Editing And Viewer

    5Dfly Free Photo Editing And Viewer

    5DFly is a freeware image viewer with a set of basic and few extra and useful features. It loads single images (after double clicking them) into a tabbed interface making working with several images easier. It supports creation of slideshows in powerpoint (*.ppt and *.pps) formats. 5DFly also has built-in support for uploading pictures to Flickr and Facebook.

    5DFly can convert an HTML page to an image. Here the user enters an URL which the program fetches to an internal viewer and generates an image from. This, in effect, is an alternative method for grabbing web page screenshots, one which grabs whole pages all the way to the bottom without the need to scroll down for longer pages.

    The more readily available elsewhere features of 5DFly are batch processing for resizing photos and others like converting to gray scale, cropping freely or to predefined sizes, rotating, removing red eye and others.

    Of further note are the history features available in the individual image view which lets the user undo any operations done on the image and also a web page history to keep tab on sites visited (for the *.html to *.jpg operation for example) using the program. Copying images to the clipboard and setting them as wallpaper are also possible with 5DFly.

    Upon installation 5DFly associates itself with *.jpg and other image formats without prompting the user for input and it sports a Mac-like theme or skin. These two shortcomings will not be held against it today however!

    5DFly runs on Windows 2000 and newer versions.

  • kuView: The Lightweight Image Viewer

    kuView: The Lightweight Image Viewer

    kuView

    kuView is a free and opensource lightweight image viewer which tries to aid the user in collecting and managing photo and image collections. The version tested for this review, admittedly a ‘pre’ (1.7pre [178]) release, is not bug free and not the fastest. For example the thumbnail panel (available via the Panel menu) is not always populated with the images of a highlighted or chosen directory.

    kuView supports copying, moving, renaming and printing images. Re-sampling algorithms such as Lanczos and reading metadata and EXIF information associated with a photo. It can also rotate and set an image as wallpaper. One can also view directories as a slideshow, favorite a directory and move between directories, not only levels up and levels down but in ‘history’ mode as well, all using the Traverse menu.

    Two additional features less common to image viewers is the ability to manage a Picasa Web album or gallery from within kuView and also to view, complete with thumbnails, images inside an archive (*.zip, *.tar, *.gz). It also supports reading RAW images.

    kuView is unicode capable, has a set of command line interface options and is availabe either as an executable or a full blown installer. It should run on all recent Windows versions.

  • Freeware Font Manager: dp4 Font Viewer

    Freeware Font Manager: dp4 Font Viewer

    dp4 Font Viewer

    dp4 Font Viewer is a small no-install utility that provides lots of information about the fonts (TrueType (TTF) and others) installed on a Windows system. When running the program provides a count of fonts installed on a drive, either in the default (for example C:\WINDOWS\Fonts) or other locations. It is possible to print a font list or a complete preview of a chosen font. In the latter either a full list of characters or one’s own text can be printed. The Font menu includes options to install or delete fonts from within dp4 Font Viewer, to view any fonts’ properties or even to generate a bitmap image of the font preview. The aforementioned install option also a includes ‘make available’ which lets the user work with fonts temporarily.

    Additionally dp4 Font Viewer has many filtering options to narrow down installed fonts by class (serif, sans serif, symbolic and others), weight class (bold, thin, light and others), width class (various condensed types) and monospaced fonts. Fonts can be previewed in different sizes from 7 to 144 pixels.

    dp4 Font Viewer is also available in a native 64bit version.

  • Freeware AutoVer Does Backups And Version Control

    Freeware AutoVer Does Backups And Version Control

    AutoVer is a simple backup and version control application. If desired backed up files can be saved in versions with time stamps appended to file names for each time they are edited and saved or the user may just schedule full backups and fore go any versioning.

    When the program launches a new ‘watcher’ should be created by clicking the folder icon on the far left (the one with the plus sign). In the tabbed settings window that follows a folder is chosen to be watched and the out put or destination folder is chosen as well. It is also possible to set the destination to be a FTP (with the associated details set up in the FTP tab) server so the files are backed up online.

    The Advanced tab has settings for including and excluding file types and additional options for things like ‘Settling Time’ which is the amount of time AutoVer waits after a file is saved to generate backups and ‘Run On Copy’ which allows a program to be launched to do any necessary processing (such as encoding a video) on the saved and to be backed up file.

    The Versioning tab can be left unused if ‘None’ is chosen under the ‘Versioning Mode’. ‘Version all backup files’ adds the configurable and aforementioned timestamp and backs up the saved file. If hours, minutes and seconds are chosen the files are backed up by time period. ‘Version Previous backup files’ generates only one backup so that an initial or earliest version of a file is available. It is also possible to delete or archive old backups by using the ‘For versions older than’ setting.

    The folder with gear icon to the right of the main program interface lets a user set up external applications that will be used in conjunction with the Backup Explorer (folder with magnifying glass icon) window. The programs associated for compare, text and images will be used from within AutoVer’s Backup Explorer. Here is also the place to restore and delete backups by right clicking previous versions in the far right of the Backup Explorer window.

    AutoVer is freeware and should run on all Windows versions post 2000, including 64bit versions.

  • myPortablePIM Is Data On The Go

    myPortablePIM Is Data On The Go

    myPortablePIM is a no installation Personal Information Manager that offers a chance to keep contacts, calendar and other information in one folder and carry data on a USB key or stick. Needing to keep everything in one folder means a newly unzipped myPortablePIM approaches 90MB in size.
    myPortablePIM

    myPortablePIM features include tasks and notes, alarms, a ‘gmail checker’, calendar – with support for both iCal and vCard – a RSS reader, a weather checker, an image viewer, an application launcher, a password manager and an address book.

    Additionally the program can be protected with a password to make carrying it around safer and includes several themes (under the Preferences menu). The different features or ‘modules’ can also be viewed on their own. One can also add icons to use within the program and configure several options like using Fahrenheit or Celcius for the weather module. myPortablePIM runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista or 7.

  • STDU Viewer Eases Document Viewing

    STDU Viewer Eases Document Viewing

    STDU Viewer is described by its author as

    View all most popular documents formats by one program.

    STDU Viewer supports many text based formats and can present them in an unobtrusive and somewhat attractive interface. It tries to centralize the task that may require several programs. For example notepad to open *.txt files and a PDF viewer to open *.pdf files. To that end STDU Viewer supports TXT, TIFF, PDF, DjVu, CBR, CBZ and XPS file formats.

    STDU

    The program has some interesting and useful features that perhaps make it more useful for some. Using the View menu it is possible to enable navigation tabs (see image) which will appear to the left of the document. Here one can search the document, view thumbnails of its pages, view its contents or bookmark a page. The latter is possible via a right click on the desired page or location of a document. Also within the View menu is the ability to rotate pages of the document. Perhaps more interestingly the Setting option, again residing under the same View menu, lets the user change the brightness, gamma or contrast of a document, this can prove useful when viewing poor quality documents or getting a better view of embedded graphics.

    STDU Viewer works on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. It is free for non-commercial use.