blog: PDF reader mini shootout

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/pdf-reader-shell-integration.htm

[sanferno]

I totally recommend Sumatra as the default PDF reader. Lightweight, fast, and it HAS zoom.

sumatra-zoom-options.jpg

For more advanced stuff, well, the choice it is a matter of tastes and, of course, money.

[Kilmatead]

...and it HAS zoom.

No, it doesn't. Your example is for the GUI as a whole, not the shell-extension, which is the theme of the blog.

The "zoom" Nikos was referring to is for the x2 <Ctrl+Q> preview pane (native). For example, PDF-XChange editor/viewer provides actual controls/page-numbers/zoom as part of their "preview":



Whereas Sumatra provides... umm... well... a full (essentially unreadable) page...



And how did you manage to get an actual menu on the Sumatra GUI? You must be using an old version. The new version has some god-awful Win10-style "button" for a dropdown menu, but no way to have a "real" menu full time as real people would expect from a real programme.

[nikos]

have you tried right-clicking on the sumatra preview window? perhaps some menu will come up?

[sanferno]

Sorry, I missed the point, I was thinking in Sumatra as a full program, not as the shell extension, in which case there are no zoom options among others.

And how did you manage to get an actual menu on the Sumatra GUI?

If I am understanding correctly what you mean, for the menu "file/view/go to...", you need to deactivate the "Use tabs" under "Settings/Options". I am actually using version 3.1.1 x64, update just after reading Nikos blog and before my first post.

sumatra-options.jpg

For me, as for you, the "classic" style is more useful, although I have give some credit to tabs, it makes harder to compare PDFs in parallel.

========

have you tried right-clicking on the sumatra preview window? perhaps some menu will come up?

No, it does not. On native mode, the preview panel only allows you to browse the full PDF with a scroll bar. It would be nice to have more options but, since Sumatra opens so quick and I am not too demanding apart from the zooming, for me is more than enough.

[Kilmatead]

you need to deactivate the "Use tabs"

You're right - that works ... though it's really weird that you have to sacrifice tabs just to have a proper menu. Thanks. That eternal question strikes again: "What the heck was the dev thinking?"

And speaking of Nikos , comparing download sizes as opposed to install sizes is pointless, as some companies (unlike you) usually provide x86/x64 combined installers, since most "mum and dad" types don't have a clue as to what their OS architecture is. It does not pay to overestimate the acumen of one's users.

[Tuxman]

Maybe it's just me, but I'm rather unhappy with most applications which "integrate" themselves into the "shell". A PDF reader is made for viewing PDF files whenever I need to do so. It should not, for example, render a whole directory of PDFs for thumbnails just because I happen to have it open for one reason or another. I disabled Firefox's pdf.js instantly for the same reason. Maybe I am too conservative for the modern world.

That said, it seems that switching from the Foxit Reader to Sumatra PDF a few years ago was one of the less bad decisions I made.

[sanferno]

You're right - that works ...

You are welcome, K.

By the way, I have just remember one issue I have with PDF files in xplorer2. The thing is that when I move the mouse over some PDF, x2 takes some seconds to get the metadata of that file. For little documents this is not really important, but for the bigger ones, it could take up to ten seconds.

Here a pic of the tooltip I am referring to.

pdf-info.jpg

Any suggestion?

[nikos]

turn off infotips?

[sanferno]

That was pretty obvious, I feel embarrassed

Just to confirm we are talking about the same thing: x2 options/Window/Infotips for items ?

Thanks

[nikos]

yes

[otlaolap]

Thanks very much for this topic and these posts. I've had Adobe Reader installed for a long time, and I've updated it with growing hatred over the years. When this DC thing came out I backed off and reinstalled Version 11.

As a result of this topic I downloaded and tried PDF-Xchange. What a difference -- what a much nicer program -- what a great improvement. So I spent the better part of today wiping Adobe completely (registry and file deletions by hand because its uninstall is dreadful) and reengineering my bloating always-running AutoHotkey support routine to work with PDF-XChange in the customized manner I have learned to like. This was much easier and cleaner than with Adobe Reader. Even without the benefit of the Xplorer2 quick-view native preview, I'd be glad to have PDF-XChange over Adobe.

To any other Adobe-using readers of this thread: give PDF-XChange a try. (I didn't try Sumatra and it too may be much better than Adobe.)

[dunno]

Which of these "alternative readers would be the best one to purchase ?.
Filling in fields of official forms is a must. For some strange reason .gov and pretty much any online form worldwide is in pdf format, this must be a conspiracy between Bloatware Adobe and the.gov's to force joe and soap to fork out megabucks for that horrible bloatware.

[nikos]

it looks like nobody knows the answer so I'll tell you that PDF XChange viewer, the xplorer2 sweetheart, also has a paid full version that I think (without having tried it) is a full PDF editor. So you could give it a try if they have a free trial

[Kilmatead]

Technically speaking, the XChange editor actually is the de-facto viewer, since the discrete viewer itself (with its limited-annotation mode) is being sidelined as a superfluous product. This is no bad thing since the editor itself works fine in free-mode (roughly the same paradigm as x2-Lite, where any edits you commit amount to a watermark). This mode does not "expire" as such, and all features remain available, just watermark-prone. To be fair, these are primary edits, such as the removal/addition of pages, underlining/commenting text, etc. You only need to pay for it if you wish to be able to remove the watermarks - other than that, it works perfectly as the primary viewer, and feels just as lightweight (in fact better in many ways, such as the in-built search layout).

That being said, I can't answer this definitively, simply because I've never filled-out a PDF-"form" in my life, so I don't know the expected behaviour of simple input fields.