Picasa photo viewer nostalgia

Picasa 3, the (discontinued) Photo Editor and Viewer was such a great piece of software... There are some replacements (eg. can think of XNView for instance for viewing, and many more for editing...) but none come close to how user friendly Picasa was.

So for those, like me, who want to run this fantastic thing, even if it hasn't been updated in a long time, but still works like a charm, I have an old copy of the installer I am sharing here:

Picasa 3.9

picasa39-setup.exe, 13,0 MB in size

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtfcQZSwyBPCirMfwnluJUBCkLumBg?e=JOwSFj

I bet you can also find it on FileHippo.com, or some other archiving – file sharing service. But here it is anyway. Enjoy! ;-)

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If using a deprecated software is not something for you but that you still need to browse high volumes of images scattered in directories, a quick and easy fallback back solution (even if it's not as nice) might be XnView:

choco install -y xnview

BringBackFromTray: for MinimizeToTray extension users (Firefox or Thunderbird)

The first extension I installed on Firefox was MinimizeToTray. I love it.

Sadly, It's easy to minimize my prefered browser (Ctrl+Shift+M) but there is no keystroke to bring it back from the Tray: I though for a long time about implementing a global hook that would wait for the keyboard shortcut and activate the Firefox window.

My brand new Logitech keyboard provided a much easier solution! This keyboard has special buttons that can be configured to launch the program of my choice. So I wrote the program below (AutoIT language). Feel free to use it. But, as usual, take note that this program is provided without any guarantee:

; static variables
$program_name="Firefox"
$program_path=_
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

; set AutoIT options
AutoItSetOption("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)

; Get state of the firefox window
; (eg. 21 minimize to tray =  1 + 4 + 16 )
; (eg. 23 minimize = 1 + 2 + 4 + 16 )
$state = WinGetState($program_name)

; not runing ?
; -> launch the program
If Not $state Then
 Run($program_path)
; not visible ?
; -> bring from the tray
ElseIf Not BitAND($state, 2) Then
 WinActivate($program_name)
; visible and active ?
; -> MinimizeToTray
ElseIf BitAND($state, 8) Then
 ControlSend ($program_name, "", ""_
 , "{SHIFTDOWN}{CTRLDOWN}m{CTRLUP}{SHIFTUP}")
; visible but not active ?
; -> activate
Else
 WinActivate($program_name)
 WinWaitActive($program_name)
EndIf

I recommend you have a look into this great tool called AutoIT: it is extremely useful and efficient in a day-to-day basis; and its syntax is very simple (Basic-like).