Maybe these are too many subjects for one thread, but they're related. Anyway mods, feel welcome to split / move this if needed.

Why use an image viewer for PA? Because you want to zoom in, esp if you have a hi res screen, and you can no longer zoom in current browsers. So what I do when I want to look at, rate and crit PA on the web is: copy every single image into a PA folder, permanently opened in ACDSee so the latest downloaded file always appears at the end, open the file at a locked zoom factor of 200% and upward as needed, look, and delete (or keep).

It happens I have ACDSee 8.0 (need it for work), so that's why I'm using it, and I like / I'm used to many of its features, such as zoom /zoom lock /unlock shortcuts.

What do you use and why?

Now, ACDSee has 2 main issues with PA: transparency (not supported) and anims (supported but buggy).
Transp is always replaced by some solid color: white, black, any primary, any other color. I suspect it's the color the artist used as a transp placeholder, but I can't be sure of that, because I don't do transp that way.
A consequence is you can't check your pieces for transp on ACDSee.

Anims: sometimes they show well, sometimes not at all, often in between.
Pick your favorite bug:
1- transp bg is a solid flashy color on one frame only, white elsewhere;
2- some frames appear badly cropped, as if some kinds of layers were used and only some moving part shows: one frame in an anim is bad; half or all of them is horrible;
3- timeframe for the first frame is not respected: this happens often;
4- timeframe for all frames is not respected and the whole anim is way too fast: this is uncommon;
5- any combination of these, plus some I probably forget.

Some of these happen with my own anims (made with ImageReady): #2 sometimes (not recently, I must have tweaked something in IR but I don't remember what), #3 often or always. All my transp pieces show on a white bg.


Can anyone explain any of this?
Does anyone use a later version of ACDSee, and has those problems too, or not?
Does anyone have similar problems with other viewers, and more important, does anyone use a good viewer with ACDSee-like features and without the bugs?

Widening the question range: how are anims coded? How come many downloaded anims have a timeframe of 0 when checked in ImageReady, and yet show with correct speed?
How can you reduce an anim file weight? (that bloody 10 k limit...)
Any links?