File viewer

Short description: Application form for viewing computer file contents

A file viewer is utility application software on operating systems for example; Windows, MacOS and Linux, that handle the access of files that are located on data storage devices to be accessible by the user. File viewing utility software allows the user to open and read content on a Personal Computer (PC) or on a Mobile phone.

Overview

File viewer applications can be split into the following categories:

• File Viewer Only applications do not allow the user to edit files.
• File Viewer and Converter applications allow both viewing data and exporting data in a different file format, or by copying information to the clipboard.
• File Viewer and Editor applications allow the user to view existing files, create a new file of a specific type, or modify the content of an existing file.

Such division of functionality was initially a result of software licensing for proprietary file formats, as all file formats can be read freely but software licenses may exist that limit file creation and modification algorithms to be used only by the licensor. For example, database software DBASE used a proprietary algorithm for creating .DBF files, but Norton Commander had a built-in viewer for .DBF files. Acrobat Reader supports viewing of .PDF files, but another software application such as Adobe Photoshop, LibreOffice or Microsoft Word is required to create .PDF files.

File viewers need to have structural information about the file format to be viewed in order to handle different byte orders, code pages or newline styles. On the contrary, media file viewers, such as Video Player applications may have initially very small number of file formats or none recognized, but rely on video codecs to play various media, making their capability to read and represent media file data to the user expandable.

Some file viewers may be classified as filters that translate binary files into plain text (e.g., antiword). However, depending on the competence of the translating routines, some information may be lost.

Image viewers display graphic files on screen. Some viewers such as IrfanView are capable of reading multiple graphic file formats but some such as JPEGview are dedicated to a single format. Common image viewer features include thumbnail preview and creation, image zooming and rotation, color balance and gamma correction, resizing, etc.

A web browser is a type of file viewer, which renders HTML markup into a human-friendly presentation. Although HTML is stored in plain text files, viewing an HTML file in a browser and in a text editor produces significantly different results. Web browsers may also be used to view multimedia files such as images, videos, pre-formatted documents, interactive environments, 3D models, augmented reality and virtual reality applets.

Examples

Plain text files

• Less (Unix)
• gedit (Unix)
• Most (Unix)
• pg (Unix)
• More (command)
• vi
• notepad

Microsoft Office documents

• Microsoft Word Viewer
• Microsoft Excel Viewer
• PowerPoint Viewer
• Antiword

PDF files

• Adobe Acrobat
• Atril
• Evince
• PDF.js
• see Category:PDF readers

Image files

• Directory Opus
• IrfanView
• ACDSee
• XnView

Video and audio files

• Media Player Classic
• Windows Media Player
• VLC

Binary files

• Hiew
• UltraEdit
• Midnight Commander
• ExifTool

Programming languages source code files

• Notepad++
• VS Code

VRML and 3D models files

• VRML Viewer
• FreeWRL
• view3dscene
• Microsoft 3D viewer

Microsoft Project plan files

• Microsoft Project
• Seavus Project Viewer

See also

• Binary file
• Electronic document
• Image viewer
• Media player
• Text editor
• Web browser
• Terminal pager