Windows 7: Picture Viewer

I have two computers. One with XP and a newer Vista 64 bit. The picture viewer on my XP is excellent! I can zip through a folder of pictures and they look great...and.....(and this is a great big) AND......the animated gifs work. However, when I bought my new Vista computer, I was NOT able to views these gifs because Vista does not support animated gifs. I was shocked! I actually had to download someone else's software to view my gifs.



And now I am hoping that Microsoft has taken steps to improve the media capabilities of Windows 7 by allowing it to support animated gifs. So my question is....does the Windows 7 picture viewer support animated gifs??

I'm afraid it doesn't (doesn't do it here on default setting in windows picture viewers, tried preview, windows live one and office image preview, and it doesn't show the animation).

I know this is not what you want to hear, but using a third party image viewer is no big deal at all.

For something lightweight, yet powerful, irfanview.

Hello Chuck, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Windows 7 Windows Photo Viewer like the Vista Windows Photo Gallery only supports viewing a still image of the GIF file. By default, Windows 7 and Vista use Internet Explorer instead to view animated GIF files. Sorry, but you will have to use a 3rd party image viewer like the one Hdfrango suggested above.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

I recommend giving Faststone Image Viewer a try. It's a great free image viewer that does display .gif files with animation, and about every other format including most raw formats. Really great program and hard to believe it's free. You can make it the default image viewer in Windows and it's also super fast as well as very full featured. The only reason I don't use Fastone as the default viewer myself is that I like to be able to zoom in on images using the scroll wheel alone (without having to hold down another button). Most other image viewers besides the Windows one and the Windows Live one seem to require holding down a key in combination with the scroll wheel. But I do frequently use it anyway for some of its other excellent features.

Edit: While taking another look at Faststone as I was thinking about this post, I just discovered that it is possible to remap the fuctions of certain keys in FastStone. So it turns out I am now able to use the scroll wheel by itself to zoom which is what I liked about the default Windows photo viewer. So with that adjustment made, now I'm really happy to make FastStone my default image viewer. Also the up and down arrow keys zoom in and out in nice increments and the right & left arrow keys advance to the next photo or move back to the previous photo respectively. Now it's perfect.

I also love the way it opens photos by default into a borderless full screen view without any buttons or menus showing. Then if you want to see some menus, you just move the mouse to any of the screen edges and a different menu appears depending on which edge you bring the mouse to. It's really the best viewer I've seen and I've tried a lot of them, including expensive ones. Although it has some fairly advanced editing abilities, I do use other apps for serious editing and another nice feature is that one can easily open those apps while viewing a particular image right from within Faststone. So, I mainly like it for it's great viewer functions (and it's ok for very simple editing as well).

I am so sad that Microsoft didn't fix this. And I am also surprised. Why would they downgrade their software?? The picture viewer on my XP computer is the best I have ever seen. Why Microsoft would not choose to keep the good attributes of their OS is beyond me. I just can't believe it.

Thanks for the suggestions. I do have Infranview on my Vista computer. I don't much care for the fact that it does not follow the numbering in an ordinary sequence, as they are labeled. And I hate it that when it reaches the end of the folder it just stops. In XP it starts over again automatically. I will give Fastone a try.

Thanks for the tip. As for continuing on with Windows in the future? I' am not so sure. I like art and media too much to settle for less. I wish that Microsoft felt the same way. Is there an address that I can use for suggestions to Microsoft?

Chuck,

It's most likely due to all of the antitrust lawsuites, or fear of one, whenever Microsoft includes a feature (ex: Windows Photo Gallery) for free in Windows that has to many options. The 3rd party companies then cry foul that their pay per programs cannot compete against this free included feature. In the end the features get watered down to basic options then.

If the win vista / seven pic viewer is good for you then you can use this for animated gifs
gifview.exe
Set This as the default program to view gif images. It is written in GDI+, so you can expect the same level functionality as the onw in win XP. As it was written by me, I can taylor it to suit your needs. Source available on request

Hi all
I am reading and have the same problem..
I made anima-graphic some times need to see someone
allways need to open the Animation shop...
buth before only click right/ preview / open the graphic with your animation
....

before have xp
after vista premium
now windows 7

well a thinking in the program " FastStoneImageViewer "

have great day all

I dowloaded the gifview.exe file offered above by corgano (exe file is virus free, after being scanned by Firefox and then by Norton) and works great and fast. THANKS!!

Another option I was using was Quicktime, though not as fast in opening the files.

I'm also puzzled by the downgrading of the XP pic and fax viewer...

That is because the new one is based off of windows imaging component (WIC). it IS codec based, so in theory, someone COULD write a codec for animated gif and intragrate it to the windows imageing program, or submit it to Microsoft, and it could end up in the next service pack.

Edit: seems there already is one. Could someone find out how to use it?