Free PDF viewer and reader that’s better than Foxit viewer

Posted on November 6, 2007 at 10:14 am

Make sure to read other posts from the PDF Reader/Viewers series!

Foxit – The alternative to bloated Adobe Reader
Free PDF viewer and reader that’s better than Foxit viewer
How to increase the launch speed of Adobe Acrobat Reader

Does anyone still use Adobe Reader? If you do, I feel bad for you! For many months now, I’ve been using the very fast Foxit PDF reader software because it’s only 100 times faster than Adobe Reader! Foxit is a great PDF viewer because it’s not bloated with tons of useless features that no one is ever going to use. Foxit has been a great replacement, but the free version has had some problems that make it slightly annoying to use sometimes.

If you’ve been using Foxit reader for a while, you have probably noticed that it can have some issues when it comes to printing. If you decide to add a sticky note or manually type in text onto a PDF, you get a message stating that an evaluation mark will be placed on the document when you try to print it. You have to purchase the full version if you don’t want to have the marks.

Luckily, there’s another PDF viewer program that I came across called PDF-XChange Viewer that has all of the features and benefits of Foxit, but without any of the restrictions! With this program, you can export text from a PDF document, add content to PDF files, type onto PDF’s, fill and save forms, add sticky notes, and lots more. The best thing is that it’s way faster than Adobe Reader and only a little slower than Foxit. There is a splash screen on this program, but you can disable it from the Preferences.

Another really nice thing about PDF-XChange Viewer is that it has a really nice GUI interface. Foxit looks kind of old (probably why it’s faster), but I found that the nice interface is well worth a half second extra loading time. It also has a grid view whereby you can view all of the open PDF documents in a grid format with thumbnails along with document names.

Some other really nice features of this program are the fact that when you place a sticky note onto a document, you can actually place it over text and the note will become transparent so that you can read the text below the note itself! Also, when you are opening a file, you can see a preview of it to the right of the Open dialog box.

One other feature that I liked about this program is that it has a button whereby you can open the PDF in other PDF reader program directly. So if the PDF-XChange Viewer cannot load the PDF document correctly, you can open it from the other PDF viewers you have installed. Pretty cool.

Finally, PDF-XChange Viewer took a really nice feature from Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox whereby each PDF document that is currently open has it’s own tab at the top left. You can switch between documents by clicking on the different tabs! Nice!

Overall, it’s a great PDF Viewer and has been working well in my tests. I’ve had an issue with the text not showing up correctly in the Sticky Note for some reason. Otherwise, everything has been pretty smooth. Test it out and post a comment on which PDF reader you like the most. Enjoy! Source CyberNetNews

[tags]pdf reader, pdf viewer, free pdf viewer, foxit viewer, pdf software, small pdf viewer, fast pdf viewer[/tags]

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads

Comments

21 Responses to “Free PDF viewer and reader that’s better than Foxit viewer”

Keith Dsouza said on : November 6th, 2007 at 11:00 am

I love the Foxit reader and have removed the Adobe reader altogether, but this software seems to have a lot more to offer. Will try it out on my test PC to check out how it works in comparision to Foxit.

Gregg Decker said on : November 6th, 2007 at 3:23 pm

Where is the link to download this software. It is not in an obvious place.

pcguy said on : November 6th, 2007 at 6:55 pm

I just downloaded and installed PDF-XChange Viewer. I have to say I am impressed. I like being able to edit on the pdf document. This is a great program. Thanks.

Syahid Ali said on : November 8th, 2007 at 12:55 am

pdf xchange viewer is nice. but if you prefer simplicity, you might want to stick with foxit.

Azmir said on : November 11th, 2007 at 11:58 am

I love the PDF-Xchange Viewer because of its ability to edit on the document. However, i realised that this software use more resources than Acrobat Reader which for me a disadvantage. I haven’t try Foxit so i don’t know how much resource will it consume. But, great application though.

Ann said on : December 2nd, 2007 at 8:08 am

I love PDF-XChange Viewer! It has simplified my life a thousand times over and I can’t recommend it enough.

vvs said on : December 10th, 2007 at 7:42 am

Fast and innovative, simply put a great viewer! Only problem a have had to this date has been with files with interactive fields. Fields do not always show the results and saving does not work as expected. Foxit works with these files better, Adobe Reader is even worse though.

Henry said on : December 26th, 2007 at 5:18 am

Hi! Could anyone let me know how to insert pics or .jpg file (eg.signature) into a pdf doc using PDF-exchange viewer? Please email me at henry.b@bigfoot.com. Thanks!

Anon Y Mouse said on : January 5th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

PDF-XChange is definitly the way forward.
Nice review except for:
“…PDF-XChange Viewer took a really nice feature from Internet Explorer 7…”
WTF???
How about Firefox? Opera before that? And the multitude of text editors before that??
IE has to be one of the last adopters of tabbed interfaces!

Rick said on : July 29th, 2008 at 9:12 am

Excellent review, I hate Adobe Reader! Relax Anon.

Dille (Sweden) said on : August 7th, 2008 at 4:03 am

I recently started to use PDF-XChange Viewer. I was impressed too. I does exactly what I want, it works, and almost best of all: the portable version can be run without installation (not a million of DLLs spread across the computer, not a wildly modified Registry that sooo many other applications does), only start the exe

Janis said on : September 19th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

Good programm specially for getting Good quality ( not blurry) pdf out of Autocad!

Patty said on : September 29th, 2008 at 8:33 am

I use foxit, pdfhammer and PDFfiller to edit my forms. They all pretty good.

Andy said on : July 14th, 2009 at 7:27 am

For those who in addition of viewing also want to digitally sign, encrypt, watermark, attach file, stamp single or multiple PDF or even mutiple pages then they should try PDF Sign&Seal from Ascertia..

A 30 day trial is available from: http://www.ascertia.com/Produc.....38;s=pdfss

john keates said on : November 17th, 2009 at 8:52 am

Well i use another pdf viewer which is as fast as foxit reader.. sumatra pdf viewer, you can download it from here http://blog.kowalczyk.info/sof.....index.html, it just installs in seconds and is light-weight!

RJ said on : December 9th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

PDF Xchange is perfect except for the fact that everytime I shut down or restart it uninstalls itself. I have no idea why it behaves this way and noone else seems to have the same problem!

Hans said on : December 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 am

Like John Keates , I use Sumatra since 1 week , and this is by far the best PDF VIEWER I’ve seen.
Very fast , and simple. I’ve used Foxit for years , but I’ll probably never use it again … Sumatra is IT !
Hans

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