Software to read .djvu files?

Question

I have some files with .djvu extension. What this extension means? What software is need it to open these kind of files?

Answer 1

See Wikipedia:

DjVu (pronounced like déjà vu) is a computer file format designed primarily to store scanned documents, especially those containing a combination of text, line drawings, and photographs. It uses technologies such as image layer separation of text and background/images, progressive loading, arithmetic coding, and lossy compression for bitonal (monochrome) images. This allows for high-quality, readable images to be stored in a minimum of space, so that they can be made available on the web.

Here are various viewers.

Answer 2

Under Windows I've found WinDjVu the best of the lot. Simple, portable, only one file (always nice).

But, just the other day, I've stumbled onto STDU Viewer - testing it out now (these last few days). Very nice, reads the lot - pdf, djvu ... you name it.

Answer 3

you can open DJVU documents in various web browsers with the ExpressView Browser Plug-in

works with Netscape®, Internet Explorer and Safari Web browsers.

available for Windows and Mac OS X, free for personal use.

Answer 4

@Joey's answer covers the topic of what the djvu format is.

I would just like to add that Sumatra PDF is in my opinion the best djvu viewer for windows. It also handles PDF and some other formats, and most importantly it is reliable and much more lightweight than other viewers.

Answer 5

here is the download link for WinDjView-subpix. It is similar to WinDjView but is supposed to have some higher rendering quality.

Answer 6

Recently DjVu Reader for Mac was released. Maybe it's be useful a bit for you.