Comical Reader Two Pages Mode
Comical Reader
Is Windows not your operation system. You search a even nicer lay-out, decent speed (around the same speed as CD Display)? Then you probably stumble upon Comical Reader. The homepage Comical Reader is also hosted at sourceforge and so open source.
The thumbnails on the right are ok, but you can’t remove them. Also, Comical Reader can’t open non archived files. Which made them third place in my Top 5. Because this means you can not open a jpg. Instead you need to compress any images you want to view into zip, rar or comic book (cbz, cbr) format.
As it wasn’t for the archive-only mode and sticky thumbnails I probably would chose Comical Reader as number 2. The interface is nice, it really looks like a book. The cache makes sure you can browse the archives without any speed performance.
- Installation required
- NO Customization
- NO Thumbnails mode
- Japanese Support (Right to Left reading)
- Bit Explorer mode, you do see the files of the archive as nicely thumbnails. Though exploring the disk is done using Windows File/ Directory Open Dialog.
- NO Animations
- Caches archives
- NO Yellow reduction
- ONLY Reads rar, zip, cbz, cbr, no support for direct image files such as JPG
- Linux, MAC Support!
Recommend for non windows users. Having such a nice looking browser for is great. I can live with the thumbnails, though poorly no direct support for stand alone images. The speed is fine, opening a (archive) file won’t hang the program for any second. You ‘directly’ find the images in front of you. So well done.
* Comical Reader is a Manga Reading Tool. This post is a part of my Top 5 Manga Reading Tools post.
Having Comical Reader at position 3.
May 14, 2009 at 12:26 am
You should update your post. I just checked the homepage link above. Among the features listed for comical is that it “Opens directories of images”. And that’s the good and sometimes frustrating thing about free and open source software. They start as crap but keep improving until they almost become gold.
May 14, 2009 at 8:34 am
I know, I’ve been in contact with the creator of Comical Reader. The developer is friendly and Comical Reader is still very alive (in development). So this post is old. I/Reviewers rarely update past posts/reviews. Any post on the blog as with this review is marked with a date, so I hope people takes the date in mind.
I do appreciate your comment, now I know and whenever I do update it ever again I will note it down.
February 4, 2010 at 5:43 am
What about Comic, it much better than Comical.
here the link http://comix.sourceforge.com/
it support open archive inside archive and magnifiying tool.
btw, try Qcomicbook too.
February 4, 2010 at 9:31 am
Oh, I didn’t knew about comix. Maybe I need to redo the top 5. As you might have seen, the post dates from May, 2008. At the moment I have no plans to renew the post, but since it’s quite popular I have to think about it. When I do I will definitely submit myself into Comix. Thanks for informing me.