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Riffle 1.0 Help


What is Riffle?


Riffle is an elegantly simple image viewer designed for quickly "riffling" through images to find the one you want. Simply drop a folder of images or files onto Riffle and then scrub through them as fast as your Mac can read and display their content. Riffle can even export a PDF catalog of all the images for future reference or to share with someone else.


Riffle is designed for convenience. Simply drag files or folders to Riffle's window to search them for content. Or hit command-o to select files or folders to search. Or drag files or folders to Riffle's app icon. Or set Riffle's prefs to have Riffle use the Finder's current selection when launched.


Riffle will likely become that one little utility you can't live without. We wrote Riffle for our own use, not just to sell it. As a result, we wrote it to be the most awesome and convenient file viewer there is. We hope you'll feel this way too, but don't hesitate to write us and let us know if you have any ideas to make it even better.


How does Riffle work?


Riffle reads and draws images in real-time and doesn't generate any low-resolution previews beforehand. This makes Riffle extremely lightweight because it doesn't waste drive space generating previews for your files. Riffle merely scans a specified folder hierarchy and draws images straight from the drive to your screen. There are no cached files to cleanse or libraries to manage because Riffle doesn't leave anything behind. Everything is done in memory and goes poof when you quit Riffle. Unless of course you explicitly choose to generate a PDF catalog.


Please not that Riffle was designed and intended for use with solid state drives (SSDs) like those found in newer Mac laptops and desktops. If you're using a traditional rotating hard drive, your file previewing speed will likely be much slower than an SSD.


Who if Riffle for?


If you're an artist, use Riffle to quickly scan through folders of graphic assets for use in your latest creation.


If you're a developer, use Riffle to scrub through folders of user interface icons or though a file package or app bundle with image resources to find just the one you need.


If you're just a person that saves receipts and archives all your paper files with a document scanner, Riffle is perfect for quickly locating those documents you need. Just drop a folder on Riffle and quickly scan through all your categorized documents no matter what subfolder they may be filed in.


If you're a parent or a budding photographer who takes photos, Riffle will help you browse through all of your pictures in a hurry. Pick a folder and scrub through your memories to find that special one you're looking for.


What can Riffle display?


Riffle displays any file that can be opened using OS X's native image handling mechanisms. This means, PDF, TIFF, PNG, JPEG and a slew of other bitmap and vector file formats. Riffle can optionally use QuickLook to preview any file that can be viewed in the Finder using QuickLook. But beware... QuickLook is notorious for previewing some files very slowly (for example, Microsoft Excel worksheets or very complicated PDFs from Mathematica).


Riffle's Features


Riffle is elegantly simple. To open a folder for riffling, simply drag and drop a folder onto Riffle's window or onto Riffle's app icon. The folder will be scanned and if any images are discovers within the folder, the first one will be displayed. To change folders, simply drag and drop a different one onto Riffle's window or app icon. You can drag files too if you already have a bunch of files that you want to view.


Use the trackpad or the mouse scroll-wheel to quickly scrub through images. Use the right or down arrow key to step to the next image, or use the left or up arrow key to step to the previous image.


The title bar will display the filename of the current image and the count of images that were discovered. You can Command-click or Control-click (also right-click) on the file name and a pop-up menu will display all of the document's path components. Select the parent folder to go directly to the file in the Finder.


You can also choose to show a path bar above or below the preview image that will both show the item's full path and let you jump to any part of its path in the Finder.


Clicking on the small gear icon in the right side of the window's title bar will open a popover with several preference settings. You can hover over each setting with your mouse to display more information about each one. Changes to settings are effective immediately. 

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• Set the window background color to the default gray, white or a checkerboard pattern

• Show the file path bar at the top or bottom of the window, or hide it

• Scan all subfolders recursively

• Scan file packages and app bundles

• Scan and display images in invisible files

• Display files at actual size if smaller than the window or always scale up to fit the window

• Switch between horizontal and vertical scrolling

• The scrolling direction can follow the scrollbar thumb or can follow the "natural direction" from the System Preferences

• View rotation can be temporary for an image or sticky between images

• Riffle can view only images, or can use QuickLook to preview any file type (limited to QuickLook plugins available on your system)

• Scan the Finder's selection when Riffle is launched. Note that due to sandboxing restrictions, the Mac App Store version will present a dialog requesting permission before accessing the selected items.

• Cache slow images in memory. When enabled and you are quickly scrolling through files, Riffle will skip to the next file if it cannot load and view an image quickly enough. The preview image will be cached and available for viewing when you scroll back over it again. Note that this option causes Riffle to use much more memory, but it is useful if you are viewing large or complicated files that are slow to load.


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• Set the page size of an exported PDF catalog

• Set the number of images per page

• Set the image resolution of the catalog images (lower resolutions produce smaller catalog files)


Hover over the left or right side of the window with the cursor to reveal the rotate buttons. You can use the preference popover to toggle the rotation behavior between a temporary rotation and one that is "sticky" and remains set between images.

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Support


Please email support@bergdesign.com with any questions or feedback.


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