Pink Mouse's Image Viewer (PMIV) is a highly configurable image viewer and slideshow program. Provided as a free addition to PMIO, it is designed to be distributed on a CD with an image collection, and to auto-run when the CD is inserted. As the slideshow author, you can use PMIV to create either simple slideshows, or sophisticated slideshows with sound. In its simplest form, PMIV is fully configured by PMIO's Slideshow Wizard. PMIO can automatically create all the necessary files for a simple slideshow without any further action from you. If you want to configure the slideshow manually, you must understand the meaning and contents of several text files that have the prefix pmiv$. Because the program is so configurable, there are a lot of things to understand and remember.
When PMIV displays thumbnails, it creates them either from the image files found in the folder, or as listed in the optional file pmiv$files.txt which is created by PMIO's Slideshow Wizard. The thumbnails are either created from the images or loaded directly from thumbnail files that PMIO has created. The latter is the preferred method of operation because it is much faster.
There are several ways to use PMIV:
- As a simple image browser and viewer.
- As a simple slideshow player.
- As an auto-run viewer for sending CD photo albums to other people.
Simple Image Browser
To use PMIV as a simple image browser, run PMIV.EXE in the PMIO installation folder and click the Browse button on the lower right-hand side of the screen. From the folder browser that appears, choose a folder. PMIV will display thumbnails for the images in the folder. You can click on a thumbnail to view the image. Note: Unless there are PMIV thumbnail files for each image in the folder, the thumbnails will be created on the fly which is quite a slow process. PMIV thumbnail files are named for each image. For example, if an image is called Image.jpg, then PMIV will be looking for a thumbnail file called pmiv$Image_jpg.jpg. It is possible to use PMIO to create these thumbnail files. For more information see Slideshow Wizard.
Simple Slideshow
To run a very simple slideshow, first use the Browse button to navigate to a folder, wait for the thumbnails to load, and then click the Slideshow button. PMIV will display each image with a short delay between them.
Auto-run album viewer
PMIV was designed as a stand-alone auto-run viewer and used in this way it works very efficiently. There are two ways this feature can be used:
- As a scripted slideshow. This is an advanced feature which may appeal to programmers and other people who like to experiment with scripting. For more information see PMIV Technical Details.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank Mr. Ton Westerveld in Australia for his extensive help, suggestions and patience during the development of PMIV. Ton helped over a period of ten months in the design and testing of PMIV, and gave me a very good perspective on the requirements of the ordinary user who just needs to get the job done.
- See also:
- The Slideshow Wizard
PMIV Technical Details
