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About

This tool is a little image viewer I developed as a learning experience for Cocoa / MacOSX programming. As I learned more, I added functionalities, such as playing animated gifs, customizing NSOutlineView, etc. and I decided to make it available. Especially since there is so few documentation on how to play an animated gif inside an IKImageView.

This application only works on Lion, and I don’t plan on making it work on 10.6 or less. The source code is included however, so if you want to take the task of porting ImageViewer to 10.6 or less, help yourself ! I’ll be pleased to answer any question you might have during the process :)

And a little note about the “Donate” button : if someone ever download this little software and find it usefull, well, you can drop a comment, and if you’re really happy with it, you can even click the button. That would make ME happy :) But it’s a donation, not a paiement, so if you want a feature, don’t make a donation hopping that I will feel indebted and implement it. I prefer to be honest and warn you beforehand :)

Enough blablah, here is what it looks like :

The upper-left part is the directory browser. It allows you to browse your user directory, and the mounted volumes. You can optionally (through the preference panel) add the root of your Mac system, if you want to browse your entire system. It also displays the number of images of each directory, and this number is automatically updated when the content of the directory changes, even if the change is made by another application, such as the Finder.

The right part is the image browser. It displays all the images contained in the currently selected directory. You can select images, cut, copy, paste them, drag and drop them on another directory, you can select everything, select none, delete selection. You can also customize the background, the size of the thumbnails, if you want to see the image titles or not, the space between each thumbnails.

The bottom-left part is the image view. It displays a bigger view of the first selected image, and it’s provides fullscreen capability.

Preferences

The preference panel can be shown by pressing “cmd+,” or using the “ImageViewer > Preferences” menu. It allows customizing a few apsects of the ImageViewer. Also, each preference is saved and restored between sessions. You can reset the preferences to their defaults by clicking “Reset to default”.

Here are the available preferences :

• Background color: the background color of the image browser and the image view. Also apply to the background color in fullscreen
• Thumnails size: the size of the thumbnails in the image browser
• Thumbnails margin: the space between thumbnails in the image browser
• Show Image Names: show the names of the images under their thumnails
• Start on last visited folder: as the name says, if checked, it will start in the last visited folder :)

• Time interval (seconds): the interval in seconds between 2 slides (you can use dot or coma notation for less than a second interval)
• Loop: if checked, when it reaches the last image, it goes back to the first again.

• Permanently delete files: if unchecked, use the recycle bin (you can manually restore deleted files in cas you made a mistake) and if checked, the files will be deleted with no possibility of un-doing it.
• Show Hard Drive: if this is checked, you will be able to browse your entire hard drive. Else, only the mounted volumes and your user folder will be browsable.

Shortcuts

• Toggle fullscreen: enter, double click or middle click (must at least be one image selected, or be in fullscreen)
• Start / Stop slideshow: space or p. When starting a slideshow, it automatically goes to fullscreen if it’s not already.
• Delete selected file(s): cmd + back or the menu. Works in the image browser for all the selected images, and also in fullscreen, in which case it deletes the currently displayed image and advance to the next one.
• Cut selected file(s): cmd + x or the menu. Only works in the image browser.
• Copy selected file(s): cmd + c or the menu. Only works in the image browser.
• Paste file(s): cmd + v or the menu. Only works in the image browser. Paste the previously cut or copied file(s) to the current directory.
• Show preferences: cmd + , or the menu.

Changelog

ImageViewer version 1.0 (sources + binary)

• Bugfix:  hopefully completely fix all the cases of the file / folder synchronisation feature ! It should also fix a crash that was happening when mounting / unmounting a new device.

ImageViewer version 0.9 (sources + binary)

• Feature: New option to start the ImageViewer in the last visited directory.
• Feature: Now the directory view is synchronized, in the same way as the images ! Means that if a folder is added, renamed or removed in the Finder, the ImageViewer will detect it and update itself.
• Bugfix: The file system event listener was not detecting a few events correctly.

ImageViewer version 0.8 (sources + binary)

• Feature: The number of images  displayed and the content of the image browser is automatically synchronized with the content : if you delete, add or rename a file from the Finder, the ImageViewer will automatically update itself as needed.
• Feature: You can now cut, copy and paste images.
• Feature: You can now drag and drop files (from the image browser to a directory in the directory browser, but also works from the Finder, and maybe a few other sources, I didn’t test it extensively ^^)
• Feature: You can now register the ImageViewer as the default application  for all the basic image types (jpg, gif, tif and png) so that when you double click an image it will open the ImageViewer directly in fullscreen.

ImageViewer version 0.7 (sources + binary)

• Feature: Slideshow’s back. Start it with space or p.
• Feature: Deleting files is possible again. Both in fullscreen and in the image browser.
• Feature: Preferences are back ! You can now customize the following parts (and it will be saved/restored when you close/reopen your application)
• background color of the image view and image browser
• size of the thumbnails in the image browser
• show/hide the names of the images under the thumbnails in the image browser
• permanently delete files (unchecked by default, uses the recycle bin in this case so you can restore deleted files)
• slide show interval
• slide show loop
• Bugfix: you had to double click twice on an image to go back to fullscreen
• Bugfix: fix crash when closing the application using the icon, instead of the cmd+q shortcut.

ImageViewer version 0.6 (sources + binary)

• Feature: Fullscreen is back ! Double click on an image to go fullscreen. Once in fullscreen, navigation with keyboard arrows, wheel scroll or two finger scroll (for touchpads) Return to window mode with a double click, middle mouse click, enter of escape.
• Feature: Directory view’s back with pretty icons, and the number of images in the folder.
• Feature: Images’ titles are back. I might let it be optional through preferences, once they are back ^^
• Feature: Now a pretty icon for the ImageViewer !! Thanks Sophie ^^ http://www.sophie-p.com/

ImageViewer version 0.5 (sources + binary)

• this is the first version of the refactoring, so it basically have close to zero option. You can browse your computer, browse the images in each directory, and that’s all. No fullscreen, no shortcuts, etc. This will be added in later versions.
• Bug fix: now animated gifs always work ! I finally found the way of making the image view work correctly with an overlay layer.
• Improvement: performances of the directory browsing is greatly improved. No more laggy scrolling when a directory contains a lot of sub-directory.
• Improvement: no more memory leak, and hopefully no bug.

ImageViewer version 0.4 (sources only)

• last version of the old design. Handles fullscreen, cut, paste and delete of images, slideshow, etc. But there is a nasty bug with animated gif.