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FastStone MaxView Mini-Review

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jgpaiva:
Basic Info

App NameFastStone MaxViewApp URLhttp://www.faststone.org/FSMaxViewDetail.htmApp Version ReviewedV. 2.1Test System SpecsLaptop Acer 1690: centrino m 2.0ghz, 1gb ddr2, win XP Pro SP2Supported OSesWindows 98SE, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista
Pricing SchemeDonationware :)Author Donation linkDonate to the autor of MaxViewReviewer Donation LinkDonate to jgpaiva, the AuthorRelationship btwn. Reviewer and Product None. Just a happy user!

Intro:

This is just the simplest image view ever.


FastStone MaxView Mini-Review


Who is this app designed for:

This app is intended for anyone who has lots of photos, and is looking for a application better suited then the default windows image viewer.

The Good



* Fast: It come up as fast as the default windows viewer (which uses already-loaded windows stuff, AFAIK)

* Good shortcuts: What's better than one-key shortcuts?
      enter or f for "toggle full-screen",
      e to edit with external program (like paint.net)
      l or r to rotate left/right,
      etc....
FastStone MaxView Mini-Review


* exif support!! It reads the exif and rotates the image accordingly. It also displays all exif information
FastStone MaxView Mini-Review


* Borderless/captionless window: nothing simpler, all i want to see when i open an image is the image itself, i don't care for anything else. It can also open the image on fullscreen by default.


* Smart edges when on fullscreen: if you move the cursor to the top edge, the menu comes up. If you move it to the right edge, exif information comes up. If you move to the bottom edge, the taskbar is shown! How many times have you pressed the windows key to check if someone said something on msn while you were watching a slideshow?


* Zoom on mouse click: similar to XYplorer's "Mouse Down Blow Up", while you keep the mouse button down, the image zooms to 2x (that's the default, can be changed), and returns the original size on button release.


* Resize to predefined/custom sizes: press ctrl-r and a dialog comes up. (actually i just found about this :P)
FastStone MaxView Mini-Review


* The slideshow features: customizable time, fade effects, and pause/play on mouse click! (how useful is that? ;) )
FastStone MaxView Mini-Review


* There are other interesting features i didn't mention because i don't use that much:

* Email the image
* Zoom on parts of the image (ctrl+drag on image)
* Simple editor (highlight parts, write text, watermark, etc..)
* Image smoothing.. ETC!

The needs improvement section

* The thing that most annoys me in maxview is the fact that it doesn't precache the images, which makes it be a bit slower than it could be. (not that it's very noticeable, though). edit: actually, i just compared it with windows image preview, and it isn't slower.. I possibly was sleepy when i came to this conclusion before :)


* I also don't like the fact that there isn't an option to allow dragging on image instead of zoom when on windowed mode. (this makes me zoom in the image instead of moving it, every time i try to drag the window) Edit: This feature exists and works great! You only have to drag with the right mouse button!


* Even though the email feature is really neat, there doesn't seem to be any option to set an external email program, and it doesn't use the system default, only uses outlook, which makes this feature unnusable for us software junkies :) edit: it uses the system default setting, see Perry's post below!


Why I think you should use this product
Well... If you're still using Windows picture and fax viewer, you DEFINITELY should at least try this, it's a huge improvement and you'll never go back :P


How does it compare to similar apps
OK, I've already compared to windows picture and fax viewer, I'll just make a small comparison with irfanview.
DISCLAIMER: i haven't used irfanview in a while, thus, i might be out of date/forgotten about my comments. If so, please correct me below.
I'm almost sure irfanview was slower, and had a bunch of features i didn't really need (like the picture browser and alike). Also, it missed THE most important feature: rotate on exif information.


Conclusions

I surely recommend this utility, it has made a huge difference in the way i visualize images, and i don't need to manually rotate pictures anymore! :D
I think it's really well-though, every small detail needed in a image viewer is present, making it a joy to use.
It's just simple, complete and freeware, you can't go wrong with that combination!

Just a few more screenshots:
FastStone MaxView Mini-ReviewFastStone MaxView Mini-ReviewFastStone MaxView Mini-Review

PS: i'll add the images in a bit Done![/list]

zridling:
Thanks jgpaiva. I gave up VuePrint (which does gallery views) for MaxView a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. I just use it to look at pics. And when I want gallery views, I flip back over to ACDSee or XnView. Well worth a donation to the author. I love how it gives snapshot info at the top if you like, and in more detail when you move your cursor to its right border.

jgpaiva:
Thanks for calling my attention to the fact that maxview is donationware and not freeware! I wonder how i missed see the "donate" button!

ThalSwe:
Been using this program for a while now and really like it. Suits my minimalistic taste without removing the functionality.  :up: Definatly worth recommending.

techidave:
I just downloaded this program.  It is much faster than the windows default viewer.  Is there anyway that I setup Thunderbird as my mail client instead of Outlook?  The software defaults to Outlook and I added Thunderbird as an external program but that didn't help either.

Any ideas?
Dave

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