Portable PDF Viewer for MS Windows: Foxit Reader Portable

If you travel a lot and have a USB pen-drive or any portable media with you and looking for a portable PDF reader for Microsoft Windows OS, then Foxit Reader Portable is an excellent choice. Although the original version of the Foxit reader does not have a portable edition thus this is a customized version by the Portable Apps dudes.

All you gotta do is just download the customized setup file and then use the built in installation wizard to extract the content to a folder. Now you can just copy this folder to any portable media that you have (say to a USB pen/HDD, etc or can use the setup wizard to do that automatically for you as well) and switch it to a different computer (only supports MS Windows) and simply launch the Foxit reader from there!.

Another benefit of having a portable reader such as this is, all the changes that you make to the application (preferences, etc) are saved within its extracted folder thus are also applied when you launch it in a different computer thus you don't have to make all the changes manually either.

Main features...

*. 9MB of downloading size (about 34MB when extracted).

*. Includes all the features of the original Foxit reader: Viewing PDF files, search/find text, add-comments, highlight text, tool-bars, etc... they're all there.

*. Launches without modifying any installed software and does not add any registry entries (other than the ones that MS Windows creates automatically).

*. Optimized for the USB drives.

If interested, you can get it from this downloading page and once the downloading completes, just follow the on screen instructions to extract it to a desired location. As soon as Foxit developers release a new version, the portable app developers also make sure to update their database thus make sure to visit their link to check for the updates too.

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Fast Loading PDF Reader for Ubuntu: ePDFView

Ubuntu Linux (Unity desktop included) comes with a built in PDF viewer called Evince (more than a PDF viewer, a document viewer actually) which loads fast and does its job quite well.

But if you're looking for PDF reader that loads even faster (not by a huge margin, slightly faster) + that doesn't depend on Gnome desktop libraries as with Evince... then ePDFView a pretty good utility.

Main features...

*. A very basic/simple GUI (one of the reasons behind that speed, I guess).

*. Search for Text.

*. Switch between the Scroll or the Text selection modes (although while I used it, I couldn't select text at all. I was able to select the text but as soon as I let go of the left-mouse button, the text got unselected!).

*. Show/Hide the PDF index.

*. Send to Print.

*. Save as a Copy.

*. Rotate, zoom-in/out, Full screen, etc.

*. Tool-bar (which includes the above mentioned tools + next/previous page tools, etc).

*. Change the Web Browser that opens the URL links inside the PDF content.

That's about it for the features actually. So, don't hope for a shi* load of features since it's not the idea behind ePDFView. According to the developers, they just wanted create a fast loading, resources friendly PDF viewer that has very little dependencies.

You can install epdfview in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 11.10, 10.10 and 10.04 by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install epdfview

Again, this is certainly not the best but if you have a "thing" for speed ;-), then ePDFview deserves giving a try (except for that above mentioned Text related, bug which can make it pretty useless for some, especially if you want to copy the content to a separate text file).

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Foxit Reader 5 Is Released - GNU/Linux is Now Officially Supported!

Although there's nothing wrong with the default PDF reader from Adobe since it comes with a lot of features by default. Yet, if you have an old PC/Laptop, then reading a PDF file with decent amount of images, etc will require a lot of system resources from your PC (at lest in my personal experience anyway).

This is where the tremendous success of Foxit reader comes from. The reason I said "tremendous" is because, not that long ago, if you search in Google the word "pdf reader" then the first site that used to sit at the top was the Adobe's official PDF reader. But whenever you search this phase now in Google, Foxit website is at the top, beating Adobe, the original creator of .PDF extension!.

And the reason for its popularity is because it loads fast, has almost all the features Adobe has to offer and most importantly, it uses significantly lower amount of system resources of your PC/Laptop.

And for the first time ever, now there's even a version for GNU/Linux too!. This is the first time ever it was released for GNU/Linux and in comparison with the MS Windows version, it has lesser amounts of features right now, but trust me, it's way way better than the Gnome's default PDF reader and many others without a doubt!.

Main features of the version 5 (Windows version)  

*. Totally new look-n-feel with new icons.

*. Comes with built in themes (Blue, Yellow, etc) the users can change from.

*. Tabbed interface.

*. Screen-Split feature for better PDF viewing/comparing documents, etc.

*. Once installed, now Foxit 5 make sure to Preview PDF attachments in Window Outlook.

*. Thumbnail previews within the file manager (explorer) in Windows.

*. Faster search with PDF files.

Although these are just a few of new features to mention there a lot of others that I didn't write down since most already familiar with it. As said the GNU/Linux version has lesser amounts of features... yet it's already a complete PDF rather than the useless Evince (document reader).

Here are few features of the Linux v 1.1

*. Multi language support.

*. Anti-aliasing Fonts.

*. On-screen dictionary integration supported.

*. Enhanced toolbar with buttons such as : Zoom-in/Zoom-out, back/forward/Print, etc 

*. Search.

*. Automatic scroll.

*. Take Snapshots/Screenshots... are again few to mention. 


Recommended System Requirements for Windows

    1.3 GHz or faster processor.
    64 MB RAM (Recommended: 128 MB RAM or greater)!.
    52 MB of available hard drive space.
    800x600 screen resolution.

In GNU/Linux by default the application will consume less than 15MB.

And for all these features how much do you have to pay?, well that's the fun part. It's completely free!. For MS Windows users, you can download it from this page. You can download the GNU/Linux version form this official Foxit for Linux page.

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How To Install The Official Adobe PDF Reader in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Ubuntu or Gnome in general comes with a built in PDF reader of their own. It loads fast, inherits notoriously simplified "options", but still most of the time I'd still prefer that PDF reader over the official Adobe PDF reader because it's horribly slow (may be it's because of my super old PC ;-) ).

But then again, when comparing its features and the customizations that it lets you do, it's way superior to the PDF reader that Natty comes with.

The Adobe reader also installs a plug-in for your Firefox web browser as well. Other than Zoom-in/out, select text, search for certain text/words, save, print, edit header information (title, author, etc where possible), add passwords... just have a look at the below screenshot of its main "options" window and tell me you aren't impressed ;-).

Anyhow, whatever your reasons are, if all you want is to know how to install Adobe PDF reader in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, then this is how you do it!. 

Open your Terminal and enter the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ natty partner"  && sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install acroread

That should do it. 

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