v
image viewer

v is a light image viewer. main purposes:
- the image viewer should display the following formats: .art, .bmp, .cur, .cut, .dib, .emf, .gem, .gif, .hrz, .ico, .iff, .img, .jpg, .jpeg, .lbm, .mac, .msp, .pbm, .pcx, .pgm, .pic, .png, .pnm, .ppm, .ras, .rle, .bmp, .tga, .tif, .tiff, .wmf, .wpg
- test backgrounds (.bmp, .cur, .cut, .dib, .emf, .gif, .ico, .jpg, .jpeg, .rle, .bmp, .wmf)
- apply and clear desktop wallpapers
- build a html page for each image in a chosen folder, with a related index in a framed structure. pages, which can be linked to each other, are highly configurable and configs can be saved
you can also use v just for testing backgrounds and colors of a html page. the "body" string can be copied into the clipboard

snapshots
 
settings:
 

 
show / listing:
 

 
backgrounds:
 

 
result:
 

requirements
- tested in ms windows 95 / 98 / nt4. as for windows 2000, see known issues below
- 800×600 display (1024×768 strongly suggested)

installing
uncompress v_setup.zip, then run setup

uninstalling
run the usual uninstall from windows control panel
note: windows wont delete the registry key hkey_current_user\software\vb and vba program settings\sundaysw\v, but if you dont know how to remove the key, leaving it will be harmless

use
im_h users should find v easy -- anyway:
first, you'd better setup two folders:
- temp folder, for storing the html's of images not residing on a local harddisk
- target folder, which is, where you'll copy / move / save images from cd's, network drives a.s.o. you may also setup colors and fonts for the html's, as well as links to each other, a.s.o.
changing folder in the upper left pane should list images in the lower pane. you'd show images with just one click on their name. (warning: this could be heavy with big images and/or pc's below 200 mhz).
the white leaf icon will show the viewer module: you can zoom in and out, as well as applying the image as desktop wallpaper and converting it to jpeg or bmp format.
the squared window icon will bring up the background module: the right pane should get filled up by the selected image, and some text lines should allow testing color/contrast effects.
if you want to get the html's for all the images in a folder, you can configure many settings. an index will be created, with jpeg thumbnails in a "tn_v" folder in the images folder (or in the temp folder for images not residing on local harddisks). thumbnails in the index can be linked straight to images or to html's, in which case one html for each image will be created (again, in images or temp folder).
please consider that v can show more image formats than the browsers, so that these won't possibly show tiff's, bmp's and other formats. -- also, while v will allow you to set installed fonts, if viewers won't have them pages might show improperly.

known issues
- virtual folders (desktop, bin...) can cause trouble with images path: so, if you choose the desktop as target folder (so do i), you'd better change to your windows\desktop folder (win9: in winnt it'll be a different one) and set this one
- some rle's and some multilayer/mac tiff's might not display properly or at all
- animated gif's may display improperly. if you want to display anigif's, you need to set a 100% zoom, then load any other images, then load all of your anigif's
- netscape users can find trouble in viewing thumbs and/or images in html's made by v. i'm going to correct this. meantime, you can try to open the html's with a text editor like notepad and change the full path of files (i.e. "c:/images/dogs/dog1.jpg") with the relative path (if the html is in the same folder, "dog1.jpg" should be enough; as for thumbs, "c:/images/dogs/tn_v" should become "tn_v"). sorry, until next release you've got to make some tries
- so far v writes down paths and images in lower case only, so that if you plan to ftp your images and html's to a unix system you'd better change paths and image files too to lower case. anyway i'll try to put an option for this in v's next release
- if you find other bugs or issues please do mail them to me -- there's a button in the "about" box. i do need feedback to try to fix them
- running under windows 2000, unexepected errors may arise, esp. when applying wallpaper. i'm working on this.

suggest
as in time html's in temp folder may grow considerably, i've set c:\temp as temp folder for v, then inserted the following lines in my autoexec.bat:

attrib -r c:\temp\*.* /s
if exist c:\temp\tn_v\*.jpg del c:\temp\tn_v\*.jpg
if exist c:\temp\*.htm* del c:\temp\*.htm*

this way all html's should get deleted at each boot. of course if you'd like to save them, move them before rebooting, or better recreate them in a different folder
please note: deleting some hundreds files this way can take a really long time, while deleting them from within windows is definitely faster

example
most image pages in xday, javalab, modena and chappi sections have been made with v

updates
12.1.2000 - rel. 1.01 - width of tree and file box can be modified
9.3.2000 - rel. 1.02 - relative path for images and thumbs on local disks

light download (1360k)
full download (2180k)