Here is where to get CDisplay
Now that GeoCities is closing, the original site for David Ayton’s CDisplay software is no longer available. However, if you check the Wayback Machine’s archive, you’ll see that install files have been hosted on my server for several years.
I plan to continue hosting this file indefinitely, so as always, you can download CDisplay 1.8 here: http://cdisplay.techknight.com/setup.zip
Update 2011-01-21:
Also, I recently set up a new official site at http://www.cdisplay.me that has CDisplay as well as links to alternative readers and DRM-free comic book sources.
CDisplay has been not developed for years. People should move on. There are now much better alternatives available like ComicRack ( http://comicrack.cyolito.com )
I gave ComicRack a try just now.. The library feature is interesting but the whole thing seems slow and overdesigned to me.
I’ll give an example – if I start CDisplay, it is ready to read a book in under a second and in a full-screen mode by default. (No UI visible unless you right-click or switch to windowed mode.)
If I start ComicRack, it takes several seconds to load and then checks an RSS feed for news and displays it to me. Then, when all that is said and done the default reading mode doesn’t give a lot of screen real estate to the actual comic. And there doesn’t seem to be a true full-screen mode.
That’s my take on it, anyway… Some people might consider the indexing and metadata stuff to be must-have features.
ComicRack is a little bigger yes :)
The idea is not to start ComicRack for each comic from explorer but to browse the comics from within ComicRack.
About the remarks:
RSS feed is only checked once a day or so
One click into the viewer and the file browser is gone
Double click into the viewer and you have full screen mode.
Of course this is and everything else is highly customizable (even the default window placings, startup fullscreen mode etc.)
So my choices consist of:
1) CDisplay, which just works and does exactly what i want (view comics/sequential images) and does it without real issue (don’t need to configure it really)
2) ComicRack, which doesn’t play nice when I open comics outside of it (sometimes I open from explorer, sometimes I open from other programs. Rarely do i open from the viewer) and requires elaborate customizing from the get go to just get to work like CDisplay? Not to mention the other “features” which I wouldn’t want either? (Why the fuck do i want a RSS reader in my image viewer?)
Psssssssssssssst…..
Try Comical: http://comical.sourceforge.net/
Well, the point is ComicRack is NOT a CDisplay clone. Can’t really blame it for not imitating CDisplay of of the box.
Yet, with little configuration, and that’s only one-time effort, it let’s you behave a lot like CDisplay. Assign same hotkeys, same fullscreen behavior, etc.
You can drag&drop file or open from explorer, whatever you like. CR supports tab browsing so you can view many files at the same time and it remembers position at which you stopped reading next time you open file.
Database is just great. You can scrap info about comics from ComicVine and then filter, sort and search with whatever criteria you can think of. And you can share your library or part of it over Internet with someone else or to read on second computer for example.
There is batch export & convert tool.
Yes, startup is longer but that’s understandable, considering number of features. It’s meant to reside in tray, rather than run each time you open file.
As for RSS – it’s there just for checking news of new version and you can disable it.
But the most important advantage of ComicRack over any other comic software – large and active user base (forum) and systematic updates (developer actually supports and listens to the community).
I liked CDisplay back in mid 2000′s, but hey – half of decade passed… Gotta move on. ;)
Still my favourite. Thanks for hosting. This is the best at what it does.