Requested Sidebar showing folder's thumbnails

[paul1149]

I just came off a Linux machine whose image viewer had an amazing function: a sidebar that showed all the pictures in the current active folder. It looked a lot like ubuntu's Unity launch bar on the left. This made it much easier to see all or any of the photos in the folder. This is not as cumbersome as "Browse folder with Irfanview" (which has its own benefits).

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I fail to see what is amazing about this function. If you open a picture folder, you can already see thumbnails of the images. Or there's IrfanView's Thumbnail browser (Shortcut T), which has lots of options for thumbnail size, sort order, etc.

[paul1149]

The sidebar puts the thumbnails very easily and conveniently nearby. You can maximize the window, you don't need to juggle other windows in order to change to a different image. Here's a shot of image viewer with the thumbnails at the bottom.

[Jacal]

There are quite many lightweight windows image viewers wit this feature, often those without a thumbnail viewer. It can be useful when browsing directories with small numbers of images. If you want a heavyweight viewer and editor with this and many other features, perhaps try zoner photo studio. Since the basic irfanview concepts don't tend to change often, I would be quite surprised if the filmstrip sidebar emerges in the near future.

[paul1149]

Thank you. I've been using IV for years and would like to stay with it, but perhaps I will see what's out there in terms of a lightweight viewer with this functionality. Among other things, it would help me organize my desktop, which frequently has new images downloaded to it.

[Jacal]

Some time ago I was trying to find a free (open source, if possible) replacement for IV (to prevent employees in my friend's firm installing IV without a proper license), but I didn't find anything even remotely suitable. Same thing, when I was using linux, I didn't find a good replacement.

If you don't already know this site, you can find some suggestions here.

If you need a dedicated digital photo management software, I recommend Daminion; the limitation of the free version is the size of catalogues (15.000), but you can have multiple catalogues, and upgrades to non-free versions are not expensive.

Have a cold day (it is 32 degrees here),

Mart

[paul1149]

That is exactly the article I found, and I found it very excellent. Through it I found xnviewmp, which is outstanding.

I'm not clear on IV's "proper license", as I thought it was free for all. One complicating factor for xnview is I would use the viewer for business, though that is up in the air at the moment.

BW,
Paul

[Jacal]

About proper license:

"IrfanView is provided as freeware, but only for private, non-commercial use (that means at home).
IrfanView is free for educational use (schools, universities, museums and libraries) and for use in charity or humanitarian organisations."

Good news is that even people with limited computer usage experiences know that they need IV as an image viewer on their office PCs. Bad news is that I uninstall IV from their computers, unless they buy a license, which is not expensive at all. Even I have one, it was like buying Irfan a piece of pizza. He deserves it, and a beer.

[paul1149]

Thanks. That sure is buried fairly well. I work at home, or at least did, but I suppose that qualifies as commercial.

[Jacal]

On the main IrfanView page, it is under "What is IrfanView?".