IrfanView

IrfanView shouldn’t be seen as a relic just because it’s “old”. Software like IV, Opus/Far just highlight how inadequate the OS provided tools for common navigation/viewing patterns are. Anyone who breaks through the “the computer is a magical box and I don’t understand any of it” barrier needs to have a manual tossed at them that covers this software right away. Nevermind gdb/WinDbg.

TBF current photo viewer for Win11 is decent, and cover the basics pretty well.

I reinstalled IrfanView from sheer nostalgia, and while it's still a good program, it doesn't handle pinch/zoom gestures as well as the default app. Same for editing, where IV has more features, yet core stuff like handwriting smoothing isn't as good.

The biggest difference between "these days" and now is IMHO the wide availability of other tools to do more advanced stuff. For instance I remember batch processing features and export features in IV that I used a lot, but nowadays I'd do it in Imagemagick or GIMP.

There is less need for a swiss army knife when the specialized tools are right there any time you need them.