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AnotherView of PDF Files
by Alan German
Ever since
2005, when Doug Poulter reviewed FoxReader (FoxReader vs.
Adobe Reader), I have been using this utility program
(now Foxit Reader). Well, that is until recently when
Foxit, in its wisdom, decided that I also needed Foxit
Cloud – whether I asked for it or not.
I always found the update procedure for Foxit to be
somewhat cumbersome/confusing and so opted to simply
install the latest version when I received notification
of an available update. Recently, the installation
process has resulted in Foxit Cloud also being installed.
It really bugs me when software developers install stuff
without asking, and – even worse – when they
don’t give any inkling of what “benefit”
the new addition offers. It would appear that Foxit Cloud
is a cloud storage system. Since I have no use for such
an application, my choice has been to uninstall the
additional program. But, it always reappears with every
new installation of Foxit Reader. Time to find a new PDF
reader!
One possibility that gets good
reviews is PDF-XChange Viewer which hails from Tracker
Software Products (Canada) Ltd of Chemainus, BC. Wow! - a
home-grown, freeware, PDF reader – we just have to
give this one a whirl!
Downloading and installing the software is relatively
straightforward. In my case, since I want PDF files to
open in the external viewer rather than in a browser
window, I unchecked the options for “Add-in for
Internet Explorer” and “Add-in for Mozilla
Firefox, Opera and Chrome”. The only other thing to
check was the option for the “Free Version”
rather than “Pro”.
As shown in the screenshot, PDF-XChange Viewer provides a
wide range of controls using colourful icons and a
regular File-Edit-View type menu. The graphic controls
are really convenient. For example, there are icons to
display an entire page of a document, the page by its
width, or the page at full size, in the program’s
window. There is also a slider control that provides fine
control over the page size display.
Buttons at the bottom of the page allow scrolling
forwards and backwards through the document, a page at a
time, or jumping immediately to the first or last page.
The functions of these controls are also duplicated
through the use of the side-scroll bar and keyboard
shortcuts such as PgUp/PgDn. There are also controls to
display multiple pages of the current document, such as
two pages side-by-side in the program window.
There are multiple find and search options. Find will
search for a word or phrase in the current document.
Buttons for find next and find previous are available to
simplify searching through the document. Options allow
finding the whole word or case-sensitive searches. An
“Ask” button will search for the target word or
phrase on the web. While, as the name suggests, the
default is to use the Ask search engine, a drop-down
arrow provides access to alternative search providers,
including Google. And, if you opt to search using Google,
this becomes the default for any future on-line search.
The program has a number of other features, including
being able to double click on the blank program window
area to allow browsing for a file in the last-used
folder. Alternatively, one can drag a PDF file into this
area to open it in the viewer. Multiple files are opened
in individual tabs which makes reviewing a number of
related documents really easy.
There are several other features built into the program
such as sending a PDF file by E-mail in ZIP format and
optical character recognition. For those with even more
complex needs, there is also a Pro version available for
purchase. However, for my purposes, the basic ability of
the freeware viewer to open PDF files and just read them
suits me fine.
Bottom Line:
PDFXchangeViewer (Freeware)
Version 2.5.313.1
Tracker Software Products (Canada) Ltd
http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer
Originally published: March, 2016
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