XnView 1.96.2

At first sight, this program is only an image viewer and converter. However, if you dig deeper you'll find out that besides being free, it's a multi-format graphic browser. It looks like Windows Explorer and it allows for fast browsing of directory contents in both thumbnail and preview views. It offers a large number of features. Among those, you can find a batch converter with support for more than 474 file formats in reading and 64 file formats in writing. This batch converter works very fast.

What impressed me was the 'Capture' feature. This can capture your desktop, the active window, or a particular window from your screen, which can be selected from a drop-down menu. In this drop-down menu, you can find all the programs that have an opened window. The capture is very accurate and your window is captured even if it was behind other windows or minimized on the task bar.

After testing this feature on pictures and text windows, I wondered if it works on video players. Many other programs fail when it comes to capturing a video playback. First, I tried with online streaming and the result was negative, but when I tried with online and offline playback, the result was very optimistic. I couldn't believe that this program was free.

Another interesting feature was the slide show creator. Here, you find very few options to set, like the time for displaying each picture or the transition effects. You can also print your picture directly from this program or acquire new pictures from a camera or a scanner.

It has a customizable interface. You can choose the features you want to add on it and where they should appear. This is very useful and makes it a very intuitive interface.

Pluses: It brings a bunch of interesting features in a freeware.

Drawbacks / flaws:

In conclusion: Testing this program was an interesting experience. I suggest you try it. I'm glad to see this kind of software free.

version reviewed: 1.93.6