Comments on: PDF-XChange Viewer

By: Moving towards a paperless office: free PDF document editor « Piquant Bites

Moving towards a paperless office: free PDF document editor « Piquant Bites — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:15:02 +0000

[...] Moving towards a paperless office: free PDF document editor By shriv29 One of my pet gripes has always been the sad inability to make notes to pdfs. This inadequacy annoys me on a daily basis when I print out a journal paper so that I can go through it thoroughly. Such a sad waste of paper just for doodling and highlighting! A few days ago, this daily anguish came to a peak. I was sorely missing my laptop, it was throwing a particularly nasty malfunctioning tantrum, and seeking comfort by looking up tablets. Given the seriousness of my laptop problems, I was given some consideration to buying a new tablet with the functionality for taking notes on documents. Unfortunately, I got a bit scared of the steep prices. The “decent” tablets available on Trademe didn’t seem so decent anymore when I found out that they were just entertainment boxes with the added feature of being a tablet. That didn’t sound like a machine that would be a good tablet for reading and taking notes. So, i moved onto the next best thing: ebook readers. While these snazzy gadgets combined the functionalities I desired: reading pdf documents and commenting on them, the price was enough to throw me off completely. I meandered into the realm of graphic tablets. These primitive relatives of the tablet PC had me going for a while, particularly the Wacom Bamboo until I came to my senses and decided to check if they really could take notes on pdf documents. Turns out that the note-taking functionality of these funky digital pens is only good on Windows Vista. Given my allergy to that particular operating system, I decided to give them a miss too. Flustered from all that “research”, I took another step back and decided to check out the internet for free software that allow pdf editing. Unfortunately, Google mainly gave me hits for software that I would have to pay for. But, my tenacity paid off. After some gazillion searches, I found this blog. An enthusiastic installation followed this discovery with a accompanied by several whoops of joy. I had finally found something that was not only free but also incredibly good. [...]

By: fr

fr — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:01:46 +0000

I also agree it’s better than Foxit.

But the review is no longer accurate for build 2.0, as the editing features, e.g. deleting a page, are only available in Pro version.

Reasons I think is better than Foxit:
- keeps saved settings between sessions
- you get a plugin for Firefox and IE
- better rendering engine, much smoother
- supports large vectorial images and native Adobe format
- you can hide all ads/toolbars
- shortcuts customizable, easy and common
- advanced tweaks for memory and thread usage
- portable version available

Reasons I think it’s worst than Foxit:
- no minimize to tray available
- heavy on ram (but also light on cpu)
- bookmark icons are really ugly and intrusive

By: Neil Parks

Neil Parks — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:36:13 +0000

Of all the freeware PDF viewers I have tried, PDF Xchange Viewer 2.0 is the best. It integrates perfectly with Firefox as well as with IE 7. It displays graphics much better than Foxit.

The free functions provide every feature the average user could ever want, as well as some that power users will appreciate. It is easy to add a comment or a “typewriter” note. You can rotate any page or selected pages.

I wholeheartedly recommend this program.

By: compguy

compguy — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:30:24 +0000

There is still a free version as well as a PRO version with extended features.

The price tag is in fact $14.95 – not $40 – it will be $40 once all the promised features are included – early buyers get them when they arrive without any upgrade fees.

As Chris says – all the free functions are still there – and new Free functions will continue to be added in tandem with those only be made avaiable in the paid for PRO version as it says on the product info page.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:59:26 +0000

@Tyler, The “free” functionality in 2.0 is exactly the same as 1.x. The PRO features are all NEW features, Only items in the Document menu require pro. Even so, the $40 price tag does not strike me as outrageous, considering the alternative for many ends up being Acrobat (this is what they wanted to buy at my place of employment till I showed them PDF Xchange.

By: Tyler

Tyler — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:49:45 +0000

As Alan said above, yet another good program has gone the way from free and useful to paid and useless as of v2.0. The “free” functionality in v2.0 is worthless, and the almost $40 price tag is outrageous! My hunt for a freeware PDF editor begins anew…

By: Alan

Alan — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:48:59 +0000

A visit to the website, indicates that it’s no longer free.

By: sd

sd — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:37:13 +0000

how do you get pdf-xchange viewer to open up pdf in tabs in firefox? whenever I click on a pdf document, it will create a new instance on the task bar instead of a tabbed instance in firefox I switched from foxit to pdf-xchange in hopes of tabbed pdfs

By: How to change the icons used for any file type on your PC Review & Download Link | freewaregenius.com

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 18:37:32 +0000

[...] I will change the default icons for PDF files from those used by my favorite free PDF reader, PDF-XChange Viewer, to another icon I found in a [...]

By: compguy

compguy — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:04:22 +0000

Build 1.0030 seems to iron out all of the above comments/criticisms – highly reccomended with no reservations !

By: Reinstall Windows and outfit your system with all freeware programs Review & Download Link | freewaregenius.com

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 06:53:15 +0000

[...] PDF-XChange Viewer: a very nice PDF reader that allows for form filling as well as annotation and adding notes. The [...]

By: John V

John V — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:51:54 +0000

With regards Foxit’s Typewriter – should also be noted :

This can be edited ONLY by FoxIt – they establish their own fields within the comment dictionary, and these fields are recognized only by Foxit – so cannot edited by other Reader’s/Viewers.

By: John V

John V — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:39:50 +0000

Pleased to say the issues relating to text typed and commenting compatibility with other readers are resolved in Build 1.018 released on June 12th, 2007 – also new features and functions added and extended.

Or you can check out the beta now – please download from this link and unzip/copy the files into your install folder where the Viewer currently exists – usually here:

C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF-XChange 3 Pro\PDF-XChange PDF Viewer\pdf-viewer

download :
http://www.docu-track.com/pdf-viewer_pre18.zip

By: Lamefif

Lamefif — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:00:30 +0000

^well said, apart from the grammar ups

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:48:30 +0000

Oops, perhaps I should have tried this out before commenting above. I was mostly responding to the claim that Foxit Reader only does form filling.

Foxit Reader is *slightly* faster, portable on a USB drive, and has many of the same markup functions (inserting an “Edited with Foxit Reader” watermark at the top of the page – “unbtrusive” is probably a stretch), and even has a plain text viewing mode.

However, I just made PDF-Xchange Viewer the default on my laptop. The tabbed interface is great for me, since I tend to keep several documents open at once and those Foxit instances can eat up the task bar pretty quickly. The editing features

If you have any documents that you’ve edited with Foxit Reader, they may not be compatible with PDF-Xchange Viewer. While I was able to use the viewer to place a plain white rectangle over the Foxit Reader watermark, I have one pdf in which I apparently highlighted text and then erased the markup in Foxit Reader. In PDF-Xchange viewer, the markup shows up and is 100% opaque to boot, obscuring the text rather than highlighting it.

By: JP

JP — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:39:48 +0000

Oops… can’t input Japanese text with IME or “C-c C-v”.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:51:27 +0000

You should mention that if you don’t mind the unobtrusive watermark on modified documents, Foxit Reader actually DOES have many (if not all) of these features.