Implemented Navigate continuously thru IrfanView Thumbnails with cursor keys

[PeteBoyd]

In IrfanView Thumbnails, I'm navigating over images with the right cursor key on the keyboard so that when I reach an image I want to view large I press enter. I reach the right hand edge and the cursor stops. To get to the next photo, which is now in the left hand side, I have to select the down arrow then navigate right-to-left along the images.
Instead, with continued presses of the right cursor key, IrfanView should automatically jump to the far left hand side of the window, and keep scrolling through left-to-right over the images until it reaches the bottom.

Thanks

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I can see that navigation with the keyboard is awkward in the Thumbnail viewer. You can solve the problem by switching to detail view or list view, but that creates a worse problem of not being able to see any images, just file names.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Perhaps it may not be easy to implement or it would have been done by now. Anyway, I have forward the request to Irfan Skiljan as I don't see any convenient workaround. Navigating back and forth is a bit awkward with the keyboard.

[Jacal]

I agree, it is a kind of awkward, but, on the other hand, this kind of navigation would be expected in a thumbnails-with-preview mode, which IrfanView doesn't have.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Is there any way to get it with the File Open dialogue? I seem to recall a setting to use the default Windows dialogue.

[PeteBoyd]

Thanks for passing it on.
The same applies if you have the shift button down and are navigating through highlighting a number of files for, say, copying (using F8).

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I received a reply.

Actually: Windows is to "blame" here ... I am not changing the key handling, the keys there are handled by Windows in a standard ListView object.
The best solution: Windows should do that.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Irfan Skiljan sent me these test versions, which seem to work as desired.

Extract the archives and copy them over your installed versions. Let us know if you have any problems.

[PeteBoyd]

Yes. Fantastic. Works fine on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.
That's a very worthwhile feature / fix IMO.

[Jacal]

I'm afraid this solution might not be optimal yet.

With previous behaviour, image data popped up after every selection move (like at mouse-over). Now this seems to be broken, data don't show up unless one moves the cursor vertically. So navigating with right cursor key now actually does nothing useful (except, well, moving the selection).

Confirmation would be appreciated.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Confirmed. Please send a bug report.

[Jacal]

Here is Irfan Skiljan's reply:

Hmm, I have (at the moment) only one solution for this ;-)

=> to move the mouse to the new thumbnail ... this will cause the new tooltip text to show.

OK?

Do yo want a new test version?

If I understand this correctly, what I wished - having the new, non-awkward behaviour, but reintroducing the thumbnail info pop-ups - can currently not be implemented.

Personally, I don't find the new solution useful, although it does enable normal Shift+Right Cursor Key selection of thumbnails. I prefer the (very) old, awkward serpentine navigation with info pop-ups. But I might be a minority in this case.

Comments would be welcome.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I think, if I am selecting or navigating thumbnails with the cursor keys then I don't care about the popups. If using the mouse to select thumbs, the popups appear correctly.

[Jacal]

This "awkward" behaviour seems to be as old as the Thumbnails viewer is (since version 3.00 from 06.04.1999). I did notice it before, but didn't care, I obviously don't tend to navigate through thumbnails in this way. So if the new behaviour ("better, but not perfect") will be implemented, I will certainly have no problems with it.

I didn't notice this kind of quandaries in other image viewers though.

Have a nice day!

[PeteBoyd]

Jacal, I see this same issue on Windows 74 64-bit with 64-bit IrfanView.