During the past three years, Irfan View has evolved nicely, acquiring excellent features along the way. Unlike so many programs, however, Irfan View retained its tiny file size and its single .EXE package. The latest version of Irfan View weighs in at a mere 427 KB in ZIP format (467 KB in a self-extracting .EXE). There are no DLLs, no obnoxious nag screens and no banner ads. It's absolutely free for home users, and commercial users need only pay $10 for a single-user license.
Irfan View is not only the best image viewer I've every encountered (I've been using it at home since 1996), but it also supports more file formats than you can shake a paint brush at. It can open AVI files, WAV files, cursor files, Adobe Photoshop files and many more! It can even open multiple icon images within a single DLL file. Name a file type, and chances are Irfan View can read it. Irfan View can also view many Apple file formats if Apple QuickTime is installed.
As a long-term Irfan View user, I can say that I've never seen a better graphics viewer, even without all the added extras. The additional features only add to its value. For quick viewing, navigating through multiple image and sound files and performing lightening-fast batch conversions, there's none better. I've used a lot of image viewers over the years, but Irfan View is simply the best in its category. Go get it.