Digital Comic Museum

General Category => Comic Related Discussion => Topic started by: bminor on March 23, 2011, 05:51:23 PM

Title: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: bminor on March 23, 2011, 05:51:23 PM
What does everybody think?
Best features, etc...
What do you look for. What do you like and dislike in each of the readers...

Bminor
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: brush on March 23, 2011, 06:26:40 PM
 I view downloads with "SIMPLE COMIC"  for my  IMac (21.5").


Warren
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Geo (RIP) on March 23, 2011, 06:47:16 PM
Here's a few from the FAQ:


There is a plethora of software to read digital comics. The most popular no-cost software is listed at the top of each operating system group.

Windows:

* CDisplay, the Windows Sequential Image Viewer for Windows by David Dayton.  Reported to work with Windows7 by Zog.
Available here: http://tinyurl.com/kwnn2p   or here: http://cdisplay.software.informer.com/

* pixelComic, a skinnable comic book viewer written in C++.
Available here: http://futureprojects.free.fr/pixelcomic/

* CBViewer
Available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cbviewer

For a list of other viewers as well as how they work try here - http://tinyurl.com/lvc65z

Linux:

* cbrPager: a simple comic pager for Linux (using GTK+)
Available here: http://www.jcoppens.com/soft/cbrpager/index.en.php

* QComicBook (using Qt)
Available here: http://freshmeat.net/projects/qcomicbook/

* Comical, the UNIX, Linux and MacOS X Sequential Image Viewer (using wxWidgets)
Available here: http://www.sketchyorigins.com/comics/forumdisplay.php?f=47

* PyComicsViewer, for Linux and Windows
Available here: http://borco.net/html/PyComicsViewer/

* CBView, written in GTK2-perl
Available here: http://elvine.org/code/cbview/

* Asparagino's Comic Viewer
Available here: http://home.asparagine.net/software/comicviewer/



Mac OSX:

* FFView
Available here: http://www.feedface.com/projects/ffview.html

* Comic Book Viewer
Available here: http://gumby.misplacedmac.com/

* Jomic (written in Java, so should be cross-platform as well)
Availabe here: http://jomic.sourceforge.net/

There are a few more Mac one's not list here.

I use FFView myself, with Comic Book Viewer the most feature laden one available for Mac's,
not many updates it seems in the last few years on these viewers.

Geo
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Yoc on March 23, 2011, 06:55:17 PM
Nicely done Geo!
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: bminor on March 23, 2011, 08:09:07 PM
Thank you everyone!!!
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Ami_GFX on March 23, 2011, 08:13:54 PM
I use CDisplayEx which is an open source program based on CDisplay. I just checked the website and it has been updated quite a bit in the last year. The most recent version, 1.8, was released on December 21st, 2010. I'm using version 1.4 which I downloaded around January 2010. There are a lot of new features in the newer releases.

http://www.cdisplayex.com/ (http://www.cdisplayex.com/)

Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Yoc on March 23, 2011, 08:24:24 PM
Thanks Ami.
I looked that one up on Wiki and found a link comparing a few different apps that some might like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_image_viewers

-Yoc
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: narfstar on March 23, 2011, 09:00:38 PM
I just got a droid tablet. What comic readers are good
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Ami_GFX on March 23, 2011, 09:09:54 PM
I just download and tried the update to CDisplayEx. Lots of nice new features including better thumbnails, much better zoom, and a built in magnifying glass that lets you study the fine details of the artwork in a small overlay window. Not to mention printing which this program didn't do before. Much improved since last year. I wouldn't have realized it was available if I hadn't read this thread. Thanks Bminor.
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Yoc on March 23, 2011, 09:17:33 PM
Congrats on the tablet Narf!
I believe some apps are talked about in the Tablet topic here:
http://tinyurl.com/4ttavc9

Please let us know what you think of yours in that topic.
Thanks!
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: alien on May 22, 2012, 08:41:24 AM
I use YACReader and i think its the best. It run in windows, linux and IOS. YACReader comes with YACReaderLibrary, an application for browsing your comic collections with three different animated transition effects. http://code.google.com/p/yacreader/

Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Yoc on May 22, 2012, 11:55:05 AM
Thanks for the link alien.
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: paw broon on May 22, 2012, 01:14:41 PM
Just downloaded CDisplayEX and it works.  Thanks for the info.  Now to put it through its paces.
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: watson387 on May 22, 2012, 05:44:27 PM
I use YACReader and i think its the best. It run in windows, linux and IOS. YACReader comes with YACReaderLibrary, an application for browsing your comic collections with three different animated transition effects. http://code.google.com/p/yacreader/



I agree. I use YACReader too.
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Ami_GFX on May 22, 2012, 08:08:36 PM
I use YACReader and i think its the best. It run in windows, linux and IOS. YACReader comes with YACReaderLibrary, an application for browsing your comic collections with three different animated transition effects. http://code.google.com/p/yacreader/



I agree. I use YACReader too.

I'll try it. I love CDisplayEx but I'd like a good comic reader that I can recommend to my Mac friends.
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Geo (RIP) on May 22, 2012, 08:55:25 PM
I'll try it. I love CDisplayEx but I'd like a good comic reader that I can recommend to my Mac friends.


Just check my post above for Mac viewers.
By the way I use a Mac laptop and a desktop model.

Geo
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: John C on May 23, 2012, 04:58:27 AM
I haven't used my Windows machine in a while (hardware problems), but the biggest surprise was that, somewhere along the line, my PDF reader of choice quietly added support for a whole bunch of formats.  And Sumatra PDF is also very lightweight.

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/free-pdf-reader.html

I don't read comics the same way I read books or magazines, so it's not quite perfect for me in this context, but it definitely does the job nicely.  And if you've already thought about getting rid of the Adobe monstrosity...
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: baemr on May 23, 2012, 06:50:15 AM
I use Comic Rack.  It is a great program!

http://comicrack.cyolito.com/ (http://comicrack.cyolito.com/)

Not only can you view, but you can organize and convert comics as well.  You can also download webcomics.
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: Poztron on May 23, 2012, 08:34:23 PM
My viewing needs are pretty simple on my Mac. I bonded early on with FFView and have stuck with it. I also have Simple Comic loaded, but always go back to FFView. Were I to acquire an iPad, I might well explore other options...

And, as I can't say often enough at every juncture, my eternal thanks to the comic owners (especially JVJ) and scanners for this wonderful site. I've done my best to fill in some holes from my own limited collection, but I am way in debt to the powerhouse scanners out there. My motto: scan at 300dpi, at a minimum. I'm betting that resolution on monitors and pads will continue to climb in the future, to the point that scans at anything less than that will look unbelievably crude. But, I'm getting off-topic. Sorry! ;-)
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: kusunoki on May 27, 2012, 07:32:12 PM
I use Comic Rack.  It is a great program!

http://comicrack.cyolito.com/ (http://comicrack.cyolito.com/)

Not only can you view, but you can organize and convert comics as well.  You can also download webcomics.

I love the idea of Comic Rack, especially with the itunes style interface on the database and the link up to Comic Vine, but the program runs super slow and uses up way too much of the computer's processing power. I've had to stop using the reader, which just freezes up completely whenever I try to use it, and enter my books in as paper. It's still worth it just a free organizer (mostly because of the [still quite flawed] Comic Vine connection), but it still runs slow even just doing that.

Did you do anything special to get it to run more smoothly on your computer? I would love to be able to use this at full functionality.
Title: Re: What is the best FREE reader for Macintosh and for Windows?
Post by: baemr on May 29, 2012, 10:30:44 AM
No, I didn't do anything special.  I have a pretty new computer, so that may be it.  Honestly, I mainly use it to organize and to download web comics.  It is great for that!  I do most of my actual reading on the iPad.  (I use Stanza for that)