X-Ray Vision For Your Files
Back in the ole DOS days (remember the 8.3 character limit?), I’d name my documents in a manner such that I can remember what it contained. So my financial documents go by “yearich.txt” and my loveletters go “dontluk.txt”. Vista and XP has made it a tad easier with filenames that broke the 8 character limit. Check out my friend’s Vista PC. It’s brimming with files like “April 2008 Monthly Report for Sales in My Business.doc” and “Secret Cajun Recipes of Grandad.doc”
Yesiree- computing had indeed gotten easier with lengthy filenames. However, when the PC gets loaded with thousands of documents, long filenames no longer give a good handle on what’s inside. Right, it’s easy to open the documents in the apps that created them. But do you want to fire up bloatware like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Reader or MS Word each time? After all, you just want the an overview of each document. So what do you do?
You visit http://www.uvviewsoft.com/, that’s what. At this site is that gem of a software called Universal Viewer (ATViewer). This free utility lets you peek into the most common file types (like PDF, html, doc) by right clicking and selecting the Universal Viewer command. With the navigation buttons, you’ll skim straight into the heart of a congested folder and find exactly what you’re looking for. No more opening multiple proggies just to browse documents. Imagine the time savings this baby will give you.
Here’s a complete list of what the software can preview
- Text, Binary, Hex, Unicode: any files, of unlimited size (even 4Gb+ sizes are allowed)
- RTF, UTF-8: RTF and UTF-8 encoded texts
- Image: all general graphics formats: BMP JPG GIF PNG TGA TIFF… plus all formats supported by IrfanView/XnView external viewers
- Multimedia: all formats supported by MS Windows Media Player: AVI MPG WMV MP3…
- Internet: all formats supported by MS Internet Explorer: HTML XML DOC XLS…
- Plugins: all formats supported by Total Commander Lister plugins
It costs $20 to register. Pretty cheap for the doubled productivity this software affords. Go grab it now!





Comment by Rarst on 15 July 2008:
I am using it with Total Commander. It’s rather good for simple formats like plain text or images, but not for more complex ones.
Trying to view Word document, for example, actually launches copy of Word in the background. Opening PDF launches background Foxit Reader on my system and so on.
Kinda defeats purpose of light fast viewer.
Read Rarst’s latest blog post….Look inside your computer with PC Wizard>>>