Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Zen Viewer - A Remarkable File Viewer + Reader for iPad

Thanks for the update, Wifi sharing using any browser works fine now!

I stumbled upon another problem, though, which happened before the update and still happens after applying the updated version. When I first tried to establish a Wifi file folder connection by mapping a network drive, everything worked out perfectly. Since then, though, I'm not able to connect to the root folder using the network drive method any longer. It always gives me the following error message on trying to connect to http://192.168.1.104:8080:

\\192.168.1.104@8080\DavWWWRoot is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

When I add one of my existing folders to the address, like "192.168.1.104@8080\Movies", it connects without any issues whatsoever. I'm still unable to access the root folder from here, though, and the message above gets prompted.

Any ideas on how to solve this? I'm on Windows 7 64-bit if it helps.

Thanks, Jeff!

Tom
 
@slochy/Tom: You need to talk to Hachisoft (our coding partner) for that one. They handle those kind of issues. Head over to their Get Satisfaction support site here. They'll hook you up with an answer.
 
Last edited:
Me again, Jeff. I've got another suggestion to make which struck me while reading comic files using Zen Viewer.

By not disabling the top status bar of the iPad which contains the network, clock and battery power icons, you're wasting potential space especially comic files (and probably PDFs as well) would benefit from with their tiny fonts. I've made two screenshots to show you what I'm talking about. The first one was made with the Bookman app running which displays files in true fullscreen. The second shot was made with Zen Viewer running the same page with the top status bar enabled. This leads to all files being displayed in a smaller resolution than the iPad could offer. (Of course, this always depends on the original resolution of each file since they should all keep their original aspect ratio. But still, many files would benefit from the iOS status bar being disabled while reading.) Would it be possible for you guys to implement this?

Pic 1 (Bookman): http://i.imgur.com/2NqHS.jpg

Pic 2 (Zen): http://i.imgur.com/wY54t.jpg

The clearer fonts should be pretty noticeable.

Cheers!

Tom
 
TheSkinsFactory said:
As far as PDFs go, I have no problems viewing 50 MB graphic-intensive PDFs. I've tested ours vs GR and I don't see a difference. However, take a PDF in Zen Viewer and view while in portrait mode. Then turn to landscape. The PDF in Zen Viewer fills the screen width by default. Now try that with GR. You get a tiny page.

With large PDFs you load a few pages at a time. If you loaded the whole thing you'd be waiting awhile. So every 3-4 pages a new set loads. They do the same thing. I'd try a couple too. I think some PDFs work better than others. I also think memory has something to do with it. If you did a lot of things before reading the PDF it may have slowed things down.
Click to expand...

the PDF I'm viewing is a 700 page product catalog. it's very slow on zen and zippy on GR after closing all apps behind zen to be sure memory is available. ill snap a video for you in the next day or so.

great app otherwise though. really.
 
w00tini said:
the PDF I'm viewing is a 700 page product catalog. it's very slow on zen and zippy on GR after closing all apps behind zen to be sure memory is available. ill snap a video for you in the next day or so.

great app otherwise though. really.
Click to expand...

Maybe useful if you could send that PDF to them to try for themselves and then maybe improve for the next version?

Great product though guys.
 
Slochy: Make the suggestion on our Get Satisfaction page. We actually spoke about it. Something we can do.

w00tini: We're going to go back and optimize some of the viewers. Sending us the PDF would be helpful. Send it to my MobileMe account so i can 'Open In' to Zen Viewer: jeffschader at me dot com. Thanks.

Thanks Fedorov.
 
TheSkinsFactory said:
Slochy: Make the suggestion on our Get Satisfaction page. We actually spoke about it. Something we can do.

w00tini: We're going to go back and optimize some of the viewers. Sending us the PDF would be helpful. Send it to my MobileMe account so i can 'Open In' to Zen Viewer: jeffschader at me dot com. Thanks.

Thanks Fedorov.
Click to expand...

I really wish I could but it's highly confidential pricing that I can't distribute in such a manner. let me dig around the web and see if I can find a good comparison in the form of a user's manual for a car or something.

thx
 
I was in search for a file management app and I'm glad I stumbled on this page before choosing to buy Goodreader :) you guys seem like you're working very hard on the app and I wish you guys good luck on future development! I'll be giving you guys a 5star review on itunes as well.

I do have a question though. Although I've never used goodreader, I heard that you can type 'g' before the web address in safari and it'll save in goodreader. Does zen viewer have that type of functionality?
 
I don't suppose that by some miracle you guys could add the ability to view .wpd files? My office insists on still using wordperfect:mad:

Thanks! Love the app!!
 
@Rx3alpha: Not that I'm aware of. You can 'Open In' to Zen Viewer from numerous places.

@Wildgift: You must work at a law office. I don't know any other profession still clinging to WPD other than attorneys :). My wife happens to be one.
You are more than welcome to suggest .WPD support at our partner's tech support site here.
They/we take all suggestions extremely seriously.
 
Last edited:
I had some photos from my 10 megapixel compact camera I wanted to quickly get onto my iPad to show friends so I thought I'd use Zen Viewer.

Couple of things - the wifi transfer, be nice to just do without a username/password for speed.
The browser interface on my PC, other apps allow me to select multiple files if I recall - I had about 80 photos so didn't have the time to do one file at a time over wifi.

I used usb cable and itunes in the end.

Once I had all the photos in Zen Viewer, I found it quite slow compared to my other apps in displaying/rotating the photos.
A particular portrait photo it didn't show at the correct aspect ratio, made the person look a 1/3 or his height etc...

I'm presuming you guys are already aware of some of this with image viewing and working on improving performance.

Thank you
 
You can use Wi-Fi without a password. Look at the whole panel in Zen and you'll see what I mean.

We're looking into the Images section. We think some things got messed up during an xcode crash. We're putting new features on hold and we're going to do a quick viewer sweep and re-optimize things.

Yes! I know what you mean about the images being smaller. We did originally so there would be black space between the images when you swiped. We're changing that ;-)
 
TheSkinsFactory said:
You can use Wi-Fi without a password. Look at the whole panel in Zen and you'll see what I mean.

We're looking into the Images section. We think some things got messed up during an xcode crash. We're putting new features on hold and we're going to do a quick viewer sweep and re-optimize things.

Yes! I know what you mean about the images being smaller. We did originally so there would be black space between the images when you swiped. We're changing that ;-)
Click to expand...

Thanks Jeff, really appreciate the effort you guys are putting into this app and can't wait for the iPhone version of it too.
 
Zen Viewer HD is #1 Top Paid App in the Entire Store - Spain. Angry Birds who?

We're now featured in "What's Hot" in Productivity for the U.S. store. You have the "See All" to find it.

We've gotten some great reviews recently too:

Mac|Life Reviews Zen Viewer – ★★★★½ (Rated: Excellent)
Cult of Mac Reviews Zen Viewer – ✭✭✭✭ (4/5)
AppAdvice Reviews – ★★★★½ (4.5/5)

Nice to see a year's worth of work finally paying off :)
 
I picked this up during the Easter Sale. Experimenting if it does what I need for a buck is much nicer for me than a $3.

So far, I'm just looking at it's picture functions, as that's my primary need.

I'd say it's 80% of what I want (which is much better than any others I've found). So here's my wishlist :) :

The main feature I'd like to see added is a contact sheet/thumbnail view for a folder of pictures. A simple sortable files system of subfolders for photos with a gallery view is strangely lacking from the iPad, so if this had that thumbnail view, it'd be pretty major.

The next feature, that's just strangely missing, is the ability to mail pictures. I had a picture in my test sample I wanted to mail someone. I clicked the icon that normaly gives the mail option, and it put it directly to the ipad photo app. I could mail it from there, but a one stop shop would be nice.

Moving from folder to folder. I assume this is an issue for any file type in the app, but I seem to be able to move from the folder I'm in, to the main library, AND THEN into another folder. Direct moving would be much nicer.

EXIF tag editing. I imagine this is well beyond the scope of what you're looking to do with the app, but as long as I'm making a wishlist :D. Mainly, what I'd like is to be able to attach comments or notes to a pic that when I then open it up in Photoshop on my desktop, I could bring up the comments. I'd imagine embedding them in the tags would be the easiest way to do this.


The latest Macworld reviews an app that can do lots of this...it's a dedicated photo shorter app, but while it has at least the thubnails and tag editing, all reviews say it's awful at organization and importing. Zenviewer seems to have those part aced, so it might be a good area to look at.
 
VideoBeagle: You can absolutely mail photos from Zen Viewer. Just TAP the gear on the Files bar which is the Manage Mode icon and once you're in there select a photo or 2 and TAP mail. It works.

Everyone: So we've had long discussions and we're going to skip working on annotations. Say we did it. It would take months to do it correctly and even if we did it, you will still have people slamming us that it wasn't as good as iAnnotations or one of the dedicated apps. They'd probably be right. Those are apps are dedicated to annotating. But here's the thing... you can OPEN IN to those apps, make your changes and send it back to Zen Viewer for Storage or to email it out, send to dropbox (we're working on that by the way) or compress it, password protect it or any number of things.

So with the extra time of not having to compete with dedicated apps, we're fixing some bugs, working on greater integration with DropBox, working on showing thumbs from your albums and photos from Apple's photo viewer, adding a camera function so you can snap photos right inside of Zen Viewer and store them in your folders.

If you want to see specific functions then tell our partner and let them know. They handle the code, we handle the graphics and UI/UX. Here's where you can make suggestions: http://apps.hachisoft.com/zenviewer/ios/support/idea

Oh and we're the featured app in the June edition of Mac|Life :)

If you purchased it and like it, could you please take a second and rate us on iTunes. Thanks!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back