"Viewing PDFs without Adobe Reader"

By George Kao
Foxit Software
Issue 11 for 2007

Some people still think Adobe is the only choice when it comes to viewing PDF. Many of them don’t even realize that PDF is now an open format and may actually become an industry standard quite soon. The simple truth is that millions of people have already started using PDF Readers other than Adobe’s Acrobat Reader.

Adobe Reader has been widely accepted as "bloated" software. Its enormous download size, long loading time and huge memory consumption are the major reasons why people switch to other alternatives. Millions of users find themselves content with Foxit Reader, which takes only 1.2 MB to download and 5 MB memory to load. Yet they can still enjoy the free mark-up, annotation, and text extraction tools. It also supports the ‘Typewriter’ feature, which allows you to fill in PDF forms.

Many PDF developers are familiar with XpdfViewer, which helps to add PDF viewing functionalities to your own applications. XpdfViewer supports searching and highlighting, PDF hyperlinks, text extraction and transparency.

If you’re looking for an integrated application with advanced features check out Nitro PDF Professional. As well as viewing PDFs, Nitro PDF Professional supports PDF creation, editing, stamping, merging, and more.

For now, Adobe’s Reader may still be the most popular PDF viewer around. However, for the average PDF user, a faster and more efficient alternative may be sufficient.

Got any questions? Feel free to contact the PDF Store Support Team or browse the PDF Store aisles for more.