Issue 51: Jan 2005
Features
- | Foreword
- | Tip of the day
- | Am I The Last One?
- | Atari Font
- | Roger's Code Workshop: Part 1
Reviews
- | Ausbruch
- | Zview
M@ilbox
| Zview by Edward S. Baiz Graphical viewers We all have used these kinds of programs before on our Atari computers. Most are basically the same. You run the program, then pick the picture file you want to look at and then it comes up. Personally, I have never had any use for any of them. I have graphical programs like Smurf, Photoline and Phototip that can not only view graphic files, but also manipulate them almost anyway I want. However, I changed my opinion when I tried out Zview. Even though it is a beta release, Zview is one heck of a program and has features that makes it different from other graphic viewing programs. When you first load Zview, the only indication that it has loaded are some drop-down menu headings. However if you dig a little deeper and look under the heading "File" and then click on "Browser" you get something that looks like this: To make it easier, I will talk about each area of the browser window at a time. First is the desktop tree on the left. I like this style of navigation as it provides a very easy way to look through files/folders/partitions on a hard drive. The little solid triangle (beside a folder/partition) that points to the right indicates that the particular folder/partition contains more folders within it. Here is an example on how the tree would look after one has clicked on a few folders to open them: The area to the right of the tree is a graphical view of the contents of a selected partition or folder. To view the contents of a folder, you highlight a particular folder/partition on the tree. If the folder/partition you are in has any pictures in them, they will come up on the graphical side and will look like this: That is the basic use of the program. You get the idea, but it does not end here. There are some other useful features and information about the program that you should be made aware of. The most important feature of Zview is the viewing of graphic images as pictured in the above screen-shot. Those images are displayed in a form which is called "thumbnails". If you want, Zview allows you to display images in a smaller thumbnail. The above screen-shot is using 4:3 thumbnails, however, you can also select view thumbnails as 3:4 by going to the drop-down menu heading "View" and then clicking the "3:4 Thumbnails" option. If I use this option on the screen-shot above it looks like: Now you must realize, and in fact most of you already know, a thumbnail is not the actual size of a graphic image. It is just used to display images and mostly to help the user to see just what images he/she is dealing with. In fact, I am using Zview for that very purpose to help me write this article. I made all these screen-shots and gave them names, but I needed a program to bring these images up on my computer screen so I can see what actually I am talking about. Now if I want to view an image in its actual size I have two options. First I could go under the drop-down menu "File" and then click on "Open" which will bring up a file selector that will allow one to choose which image to load. The easiest and best way is to just click on a displayed thumbnail and it will be displayed on the screen and will look something like this: I chose a small picture for this demonstration. Notice also that Zview provides some nice information about the image just above it, namely the image's dimension, color content, type (such as JPEG) and color depth. Speaking of the name, if you click on the name of an image, folder or file, you will be allowed to change it which I think is kind of a useful feature. In case you are all wondering Zview presently opens the following image types: BMP, GIF, IMG, JPG, NEO, PNG, TGA, TIFF and Degas picture files. The graphic icons in the upper left in the browser (shown above) deserve special mention. The blue arrow icon pointing up is used to move up the directory path from the current one displayed on the right in the browser screen. The two green arrow icon is basically a "refresh" button while the last two icons are used for the purpose of allowing the user zoom in and out of the current image being viewed. Zview allows a certain amount of user customisation. For example, the user can adjust the browser font as well as whether or not he/she wants to show the file size and a few other features. To do this, go under the drop-down menu "Edit" and then click on "Preferences". You can also set the browser screen size by adjusting the window size and position and then quitting. When you load Zview again and bring up the browser, it will have the same dimensions and will be in the same position as you left it. Finally I would like to mention again that this program is still in the beta stage and many features are missing. If you notice under the drop-down menu "Edit" there are features like Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete that cannot be used. These will be implemented later on. Still, as it is, Zview deserves a lot of recognition. The author (Zorro as he is known) did a great job programming this marvel. I suggest you do as I have done, add it to your hard drive and use it. Until next time. edward@myatari.net
Verdict
Name: | Zview
Author: | Zorro
Requires: | TOS 4.04 or greater 3 MB free system memory
Price: | Free
Pros: | Easy to set up and use. Excellent graphics. Lots of features.
Cons: | None.
Rating: |
Useful link
Zorro http://the.zorro.free.fr/zview.html
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