Tabbed PDF viewing arrives in Foxit Reader

I won't speak for the group, but I find Adobe Acrobat Reader a necessary evil. It seems like when I haven't installed it, people send me PDFs up the ying-yang. And of course, when I do carry it around on my UMPC, it's taking up space for no good reason. It's as if the installation alone is a PDF-repellant somehow.

Foxit Reader might be the best compromise I can think of. The download is about a tenth of the size of the full blown Reader from Acrobat, which is useful for devices with limited storage. For the one day of the year that I get multiple PDF files sent to me, the newest version offers tabbed viewing for even more efficiency. Just like the original, it's free for the downloading on the PC of your choice.

Comments

[Nate]

I prefer Foxit to Acrobat for my PDF viewing. It's slim and way quicker. Acrobat's a freakin' hog.

[AllanCJ]

My main complaint about Acrobat is that it makes reading documents on screen so hard. You scroll downwards towards the bottom of the page, and if you go a bit too far it flips over to the next page. If you read double-column text you're forever jumping backwards and forwards between pages on either side of the one you're trying to read. I can't believe that this product has been through so many versions, yet is so unfitted for its basic job.

On the other hand, you can at least copy and paste text from it. My experience of other readers is that they're better than Acrobat for on-screen reading, but you don't seem to to able to copy text from them to paste elsewhere. Not the ones I've tried, anyway. This seems to me a major shortcoming.

[Skip Coghill]

Allamcj,

I think you can solve your page flipping problem by hitting the "continous page" button. That should allow you to scroll smoothly from one page to another without the jump you are talking about.

[Bill]

I'm a big fan of PDF Xchange Viewer which is free (portable version available too)
http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_viewer

and there's always Sumatra PDF
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

[Sam]

If you really hate installing Adobe Reader so much, try some of the free online alternatives:

PDFescape (PDF reader / editor)
http://www.pdfescape.com

or
http://view.samurajdata.se/

[Tarun]

You can found some some online pdf converter here also :) click below link vevin.com/converter/free-online-pdf-word-excel-ppt-html-converters/

[John in Norway]

I've been using Foxit for ages and my computers run 10% faster!

[laser21]

Or you can use a reduced version of adobe reader,still have all the normal functions.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/PDF/Adobe-Reader-Lite.shtml

[Kevin White]

As far as I know, foxit lets you copy and paste. I just tried it, and it worked. It may not always work, but I think that PDFs allow you to say "you cannot copy text!" so...

When I discovered Foxit, I was so happy. I hate waiting for acrobat to start up, only for it to crash Firefox or suddenly barf up an updater message with SUPER IMPORTANT UPDATES OMFG about ten minutes after I used a PDF last. Plus, Adobe Reader seems to stay loaded even after you're done using it, and Windows would fail to shutdown because of it.