Browsing RAR/ZIP archives with Irfanview

[Seeker]

Hmmm - I came here to request this same thing.

But I don't look at this as "adding the kitchen sink" - I look at this as a way that Irfanview can be a picture viewer (which is what its primary function is) for zip and rar archives.

There are pictures and stuff down in there - it would just be nice if Irfanview could pop them up AND have the 1/102 functionality to allow you to move forward and backward through these pictures.

I guess I see a lot of functions added that don't really have much to do with picture viewing, but this would allow one to "view more pictures" that are on the computer.

And yes, an option to "include zip/rar" or "only open zip/rar upon request" would be useful.

[McDragon]

Well I didn't want to imply that this was a rude or selfish. The browsing idea makes sense. However, should this work like browse folder dialog? If IrfanView encounters a zip file it should prompt if you want to browse into it or is this a preference? Personally, I would like to see a prompt as not every zip file I have contains images.

I'd go for prompt, much better as you already explained why.

[Seeker]

re prompt/automatic

I'd look at a zip or a rar file as a "compressed folder" - so Irfanview should look at it as a folder, with the same logic it already uses for folders. But irfanview SHOULD be able to show these pictures!

Again, as I've said before, Irfanview is primarily a "picture viewer" and there ARE pictures in these zip/rar files!

[Mits]

People collecting many pictures usually keep them stored as individual files and not as big zip (or rar) files precisely because no viewer can 'see' directly inside the zips.

Being able to do so, would have some benefits - less HD space occupied (because of the standard cluster size), less strain on indexing services, perhaps less time to locate an image set during search etc.

However, there are disadvantages: if a zip file is accidentally deleted, or if the HD starts developing bad clusters, then many pictures would be lost simultaneously (and not only one).

I think that one should judge the pros and the cons and decide whether he would accept the risk. In case IV actually implements the feature, help files should definitely warn users about such risks.

[j7n]

If files are stored without compression you'd still lose only as much data as you would before. If per-file compression is used you lose data up to the end of the damaged picture. I'm not sure of the reasons why would anybody use secondary Deflate in ZIP or compression in RAR.

People collecting many pictures usually keep them stored as individual files

The key is whether many pictures belong to a set or not. If it's just a collection of Hi Quality cats, then it does not make sense to group them. On the other hand, if it's a year in Muffi's life it does.

[Sam_Zen]

I investigated the viewing of bitmaps inside a ZIP file with Total Commander, which has a strong bond with IrfanView.
And TC also represents the content of a zipfile as a folder. Then file viewing can be done with F3, the Lister.
I knew it was possible to view ascii files directly, without actually extracting, but now I tried mode '4' - multimedia.
I made a zip with three bitmaps. BMP - PNG - GIF.
Mode 4 succeeded in showing the BMP. The other formats needed an external viewer, which can be set, with
IrfanView as the default choice. Then it worked for the other two formats as well..

[j7n]

Total Commander will extract the selected files to %temp%\_tc. This was no secret that several archive managers can do that automatically.

[jl5000]

I too request Irfanview to deal with images in zip files. Furthermore, it would be good if the slideshow option could access these images without extracting all images in the file beforehand.

[saritg]

It could be used to browse pictures just like how foobar can be used to play music contained in zip/rar files.

[InvisibleMan78]

I found some archives with the extension *.CBR and *.CBZ. These are simply zip or rar files that contain sequentially named JPG files, then are renamed either .cbr or .cbz with the last character indicating the originating format.

It would be great, if IrfanView (a pictureviewer!) could open this archives and let us view them as usual, with all the comfort IrfanView already has.

I can't follow the discussion if IrfanView should be a swiss-knife for everything or not. I just think that a pictureviewer should display picture from archives too.

[Seeker]

Back after 2-3 months to see if anything is happening here.

Sorry to see that there doesn't seem to be much progress, if any.

As others said - I don't think this is a kitchen sink request - just "if Irfanview is a picture viewer - it should be able to view pictures - yes - in archives."

And it doesn't have to have zip/rar capabilities built in - I think Irfanview can do the "use an external program to extract to temp folder and display them" bit - it's really just so you don't have to do it separately yourself.

[ChuckE]

But you already can use any of the various unzipping programs to just see the contents - without actually unpacking those contents, and double-click any of the image files that IrfanView can open and see that image. What's the big deal?

Instead of your request, to have IrfanView understand what sort of compressed files they are, to send to some prescribed uncompressor; (editing from this point to more accurately state what I mean) using your uncompressor (for example WinZip or unRAR or WinRAR or 7-Zip, etc) can already list the contents, without you needing to actually extract. Clicking on a contained image file would then use whatever image viewer you have associated with that image type. And you don't have to do anything.

Yes, there is an uncompressing taking place, but you do not have to define an extraction place - it will be handled all internally.

[DarkCless]

Just a question ; is this really that hard ?

I mean ; lots of open source - freeware software have been supporting this for years ; and a lot of people use archives for their pictures (not even counting manga scene which cbz's are a standard) ; I believe it's the time irfanview also does it.

Along with (non-existant) unicode support ; which is a shame for people using localized os' ; needing to rename heck of files ; this is the biggest flaw of irfanview at the moment.

Please fix these two issues and irfanview doesn't even compare to crappy commercial image viewers...

Best regards

[wexwimpy]

I also would like to look inside zip files with Irfanview

[Sam_Zen]

I would like to look directly with IrfanView inside a scrambled zipfile with a password..