Irfan View The Little Image Viewer That Could Paul Jones
The Little Image Viewer That Could
That means loading up a full-featured graphics application and waiting two or three minutes for it to load before finally being able to view the image, right? And what if you have an entire folder of images you want to browse through? Those large graphics applications are great for creating and editing individual images, but are fairly bulky and slow. Navigating through a folder of images just isn't convenient with them.
A student named Irfan Skiljan from Jajce, Bosnia came up with a nifty little image viewer back in 1996. It had a tiny file size, an intuitive if somewhat plain interface, and contained everything you needed in a single executable file. You couldn't create images with it and, although it featured some effects filters, it was practically useless as an image editor. But it was a superb image viewer.
Once Irfan View was configured as the default image viewer, you could open an image file in a second or two. No longer would you have to wait thirty seconds or more for a bulky graphics software application to open. And the initial release of Irfan View had some great time-saving features. You could move quickly through an entire directory of images simply by using the Spacebar and the Backspace key. Best of all, Irfan View was freeware.
