PDF-XChange Viewer - Free, Small, Great Features, and Fast

PDF-XChange Viewer - Free, Small, Great Features, and Fast

What is better for one user is not necessarily better for another. For me, PDF-XChange Viewer is better than other viewers I have tried such as Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader, for a variety of reasons. One of them is that there is a plugin that works in Opera. There is also a plugin for Internet Explorer and for Firefox.

If you prefer some other reader, that's cool, but maybe take the trouble to review it and discuss it in another thread. This thread is not in the Debates and Discussion forum. If you have tried PDF-XChange Viewer and have some questions about it you could ask on their support forum.

PDF-XChange
Free Viewer

This PDF Viewer is an excellent alternative to Adobe Reader. Since it is not bloated with unnecessary features it loads faster. However, it does have some very nice features not found in Adobe Reader. One of my favourite features is the Loupe.

The Loupe

This is a zoom window that shows a magnified view of the page underneath a transparent rectangle that can be dragged around the page.



Drag the slider click the buttons, or select a value from the drop list to change the zoom level. Click on the camera icon (bottom right) to take a snapshot of the zoomed area. The loupe window can be resized and positioned anywhere on the monitor, even outside of the PDF-XChange window so if you have a wide-screen monitor you will find these feature even more useful. Resizing the loupe window simultaneously resizes the transparent rectangle. Resizing the rectangle changes the zoom level in the loupe window. Move the transparent rectangle pans the view in the loupe window.

The Pan & Zoom Window

This is another very comfortable way to view magnified documents. It is the reverse of the loupe. If you zoom in on the main window so that the page is bigger than the window, the Pan & Zoom Window shows a thumbnail of the page, with a transparent rectangle that you drag around to pan the document in the main window. The Pan & Zoom Window can be resized and repositioned anywhere on the monitor.

If the window is maximised, try putting it in the top right corner. That will cover the advertisement in the free version, which is otherwise wasted space and barely intrude into the document viewing area. It has four blue buttons for navigating the document pages, zoom buttons, and a drop list for selecting the zoom level.

Resizing the blue transparent rectangle will change the zoom level in the main document window and simultaneously change the viewed area.

Either one of these two viewing methods is far superior to using the drag hand or dynamic zoom in Adobe Reader, although that was also quite useful. I say “was” because I won’t want to use it any more after trying these new methods.

Page Thumbnails

When viewing PDF documents in single page mode, when you drag on the scroll handle, a thumbnail of the current page pops up by the side of the scroll bar and changes to show the page that will be displayed when you release the mouse button.

This is another neat feature in PDF-XChange that helps when browsing long PDF files. Although of limited usefulness when browsing reams of plain text unless you know the page number that you are seeking, if documents contain at least a few pictures, tables, or illustrations, it is a great aid to finding the page that you’re looking for.

Commenting and Markup Tools

You can add sticky notes, text boxes, lines, arrows, shapes and text to PDF documents. You can highlight, strikeout, or underline selected text. Comments and markup are saved with the document and can be modified or deleted later.

Multiple Document Interface

The Document Tab Toolbar is on by default, but you can turn it off in Preferences if you want to save space. Even if it is off, you can switch to other open documents from the Window menu or with the Control Tab key shortcut.

The tile icon shows a page of thumbnails with the current view on all open documents. This is another feature that is streets ahead of anything I have seen elsewhere. If you work on multiple PDF documents and constantly have to cross-reference what you were reading earlier, it is so easy to find what you want with just two clicks — one on the tile icon, then one on the appropriate thumbnail.



There is an option to turn off the multiple document interface, just in case you like to do things the hard way. You can allow multiple instances of PDF-Xchange, or allow only one instance to be active, thus keeping all open documents within one window.

Fullscreen Mode

If you just want to concentrate on reading, enter the fullscreen mode (F12). The more usual F11 shortcut will toggle the Toolbars and Menu on/off in both screen modes. Even with the toolbars off, you can switch to other documents with Control Tab, and use the Pan and Zoom Window to navigate the current document. Press Escape to exit from fullscreen mode.

Export as Image

Export any document to a Multipage TIFF image, or to any of the popular image formats — PNG, GIF, JPG PCX, or BMP — and some formats I am not familiar with. Set the resolution to 72 dpi or 2,400. Change the page background colour or make it transparent. Automatically assign file names to the images with variables.



Navigation of Views

A new feature added in build 024 that lets the user navigate back and forth between different views on the same document. Very useful for finding your place again after searching for something elsewhere in the document. The shortcuts Alter Left Arrow and Alter Right Arrow are sensible and therefore easy to remember.

Remember Previous View

PDF-XChange remembers the previous view of each document. On reopening a document, whether from Windows Explorer or from the recent files menu, it reopens at the same place as last time, and at the same zoom level. This is a huge time saver. I wish all of my favourite programs had this feature. Open at last editing position is available in OpenOffice, and open fonts from last time is an option FontCreator, but a similar feature is not yet available in MainType or PagePlus.

Conclusions

This application blows Adobe Reader out of the water. It is faster, has a better feature set, and an easier to use interface. There are no banners, no watermarks on documents, no limitations or restrictions, just a small banner ad for other products by the same company. There is also a support forum that responds promptly to any problems. Bugs are usually fixed quickly with frequent updates. The history of changes (added at my request) shows the latest bug fixes and new features. This one is a keeper. Download it now. You may never open Adobe Reader again.

The default fullscreen mode is always single page. Customise a standard toolbar to add icons for facing or continuous facing pages, and assign shortcuts to show/hide the toolbar (and for page layout modes if you wish). The fullscreen toolbar setup is remembered independently from windowed mode, and browser plugin.

You can also opt to show the cover page on the right in facing mode (from the View menu, Page Layout) so that odd pages are on the right, and you can remove the space between facing pages. The end result is like this in fullscreen.



Sessions
PDF-XChange will remember the last session, but only one session.

If you need to work with multiple sessions, a Tracker forum member Podhorny wrote this utility — PDF Session to work with sessions.

• Save the text file with an extension of *.ses
• Run the utility and open the session file, or drag and drop the session file onto PDFsession.exe to open the session

If you also have PDF-XChange set to remember its last session, the utility will open the session files and the remembered session's files will open too.

version 2.5.0200.0 release - 14-12-2011

A major new feature to read scanned images in PDF files using OCR technology was added in this recent update. Many bugs were fixed, and some other improvements were made. I haven't had time to review the new version yet.

• Introduced OCR feature to OCR image based PDFs and add text searchable layer.
  FREE for all end-users!
• Fixed embedding fonts which do not use some optional TTF tables.
• Fixed possible crash when editing empty rich text fields in some XFA forms.
• Fixed combobox, listbox, etc. not working when items are loaded from data.
• Fixed character mapping for non-embedded symbolic fonts.
• Fixed character mapping for some embedded symbolic fonts.
• Fixed handling invalid object position in only partially valid PDF files.
• Fixed possible crash for some pdf files where embedded CFF fonts are incomplete.
• Resolved an issue with demo labels present when showing PDF in browser. (11616)
• Resolved rare issue with decoding some JPEG streams.
• Resolved issue with redudant warning message in similar cases to an issue with Attachement views. (12182)
• Resolved issue with possible viewer crash when a message box is shown in the document modification event handler. (12066)
• Resolved issues with widget appearance recreation which may cause to the application to retrieve an 'invisible' widget.
• Resolved minor issues with Attachments view.
• Resolved issue with handling Alt+key hotkeys. (11856)
• Resolved issues where spaces could be ignored by the text composer in some circumstances. (12141)
• Resolved problem with reordering bookrmarks in some circumstances.
• Fixed issue with date modification of a parent annotation when its popup is opened or closed. (12056)
• Resolved issue with missing elements of text lables for digital signature appearance.
• Resolved issue with popups for annotations and their various states. (12055)
• Resolved possible issue with text orientation in some rotated form fields.
• Added new property "Search.AutoSelectFirstRes" to allow automatic selection of a first search result. (12001)
• Added new notification "Notifications.BeforeOpenAttachment" - fired when an attachment is to be opened from the Attachments view. (11910)
• Added handling of "#xml=<url>" parameter when opening a file by URL. (11972)
• Added option to automatically delete a file downloaded during the "Open by URL" when it is closed.
• Added support for textColor,textSize and textFont properties of a field object.
• Improved text selection/extraction algorithms.
• Fixed a possible crash on some XFA forms.

I've been using this for quite a while. The 64 bit version is good as well. I know Adobe have vastly improved their PDF Reader, but I am reluctant to change. This is one of the 'great' freeware products online IMO.

Version 2.5.0201.0 - release - 23-01-2012

• Fixed issue with some combo box fields in dynamic and static XFA files. (12489)
• Resolved issue with saving dashed borders for link annotations. (12164)
• Resolved issues with text positioning after performing OCR when page is rotated or cropped. (12321, 12327)
• Resolved possible issue with printing hidden form fields. (12391)
• Fixed refresh/repainting bug with ActiveX control on the DialogForms. (12458)
• Fixed issue with layer grouping in layers view. (T#1380) (12287)
• Fixed issue with preview control in Export-to-Image dialog. (T#1371) (12229)
• Fixed issue with left/right scrolling using a mouse middle-button. (T#1399) (12385)
• Resolved an issue with the handling of mouse clicks on the image-fields (XFA-forms). (12329)
• Resolved issue with updating date/time info in comments pane during editing of comments. (12056)
• Added workaround for reading PDF files with broken /ID fields. (T#1397)

I've been using it from over a year and i think that probably is the best pdf reader.
Lightweight, fast, fully compatible with browsers and with several functionalities. What else could you ask to a pdf reader?

Pesala,

Thank you so very much for recommending this viewer. I have been using it instead of Acrobat Reader for quite a while and love it. As you point out, it works very well with Opera.

I just bought a new printer/fax/scanner and have decided to try PDF-XChange PRO (their top-of-the line program) instead of PaperPort for scanning to PDF, as well as its many other features. If not for your posts, I would not know about this family of programs.

Originally posted by chileverde:

I just bought a new printer/fax/scanner and have decided to try PDF-XChange PRO (their top-of-the line program) instead of PaperPort for scanning to PDF, as well as its many other features.

In fact, even the free version will perform OCR on scanned documents. However, there are some other useful features available only in the Pro version.

Comparison Chart

Two more update to version 2.5 since version 3 has been delayed again.

version 2.5.203.0 release - 18-06-2012

• Fixed issue with generating invalid digital signature.

version 2.5.202.0 release - 15-06-2012

• Fixed handling of printerName property of PrintParams class.
• Support of callout property for annotation object. (T#1511)
• Resolved issue with handling button form's fields with a non-stanand appearance. (T#1514)
• Fixed some issues with time stamping. (T#1497)
• Fixed issue with sequential scanning. (13254)
• Fixed issues with importing non-standard stamps from FDF files. (T#1469, T#1418, T#1466)
• Fixed issues with importing non-standard stamps from XFDF files. (13018)
• Resolved an issue with placing rotated stamps. (T#1477)
• Resolved issue with printing rotated content on PCL printers. (T#1471)
• Resolved issue with bitonal J2K images. (T#1450)
• Fixed lock up issue on Save with dynamic XFA forms. (12823)
• Resolved issue with very slow getNthFieldName function in some cases. (9491)
• Resolved an issue with text-alignment in AcroForm-comboboxes. (T#1427) (13011)
• Resolved an issue with selecting the combo-items by keyboard. (T#1434)
• Resolved an issue when running some JS-scripts. (T#1425) (12624)
• Fixed issue with freezing of control after some [Alt]-key presses. (T#1298) (11856)
• Fixed issue with handling of 'file;//'-url in 'OpenURL' pdf-action. (T#1438)
• Fixed issue with handling of 'document.ReadOnly' property for form-fields. (T#1449) (12904)
• Fixed issue for support of TabletPC (and added hidden option to turn off support). (T#1445) (12716)
• Resolved issue with highlighting of 'corresponding' bookmark in bookmarks-view. (T#1440)
• Fixed issue with flashing of item in taskbar after loading an first document. (T#1429) (12633)
• Resolved issue with ColorPicker's popup on multi-monitor configuration of desktop. (T#1487) (5200)
• Resolved issue with text-lables in 'Zoom Level' dropdown-menu. (T#1499)
• Implement setPageBoxes method of the document object. (12522)
• Added support for undocumented password checking algorithm introduced in Adobe Acrobat X.
• Added new feature - 'Remove Broken Recents at Startup' on 'Manage Recents...' dialog.
• Added combobox on the 'Print' dialog to improving duplex-printing. (T#1516) (8042)
• Add new 'Prepare' printing-event. (13039)
• Enabled abilty to setting of custom shortcut for 'Online Search' tool-item. (T#1472) (13266)
• Enabled mouse back-button support for 'In-Browser' mode. (T#1500) (13682)
• Added new option to expand original ligatures on text copying. (12949)
• Added new options to show/hide stamp-collections: prop. 'Commenting.HideStdStampsCollections', cmd. 'ShowStampsCollection'.
• Added - write EOF char after end of PDF file marker to workaround Adobe's incremental update's issues. (13690)
• Improved performance on saving document. (T#1486)
• Improved rendering performance for large number of small images used CalRGB color space. (T#1460)
• Added workaround to handle images with incorrect filters. (T#1457)
• Changed toggle-by-shortcut behaviour for 'Full Search' Pane. (T#1410) (12526)
• Improved URL-recognition in plain text on the pages. (13806)

version 2.5.205.0 release - 14-08-2012

• Fixed issue with handling mouse up event on some form fields. (T# 1576)
• Fixed spelling error in command name. (T#1543)
• Changed algorithm when getting a page's margin - as this causes problems with some printers. (T#1564)
• Fixed issue with horizontal scroll bar on bookmarks view. (T#1527)
• Resolved issue with menu's shorcuts after application's window activation. (T#1528)
• Fixed issue with mouse wheel scroll on first activation in IE. (13856)
• Implemented doc.info object. (T# 1606)
• Trim URL specified in the Open URL dialog to remove erroneous/superfluous content. (T#1529)

version 2.5.204.0 release - 17-07-2012

• Language files updated and other minor fixes.

Version 3.0 Beta due for release within weeks.

Version 3.0 Beta is available for testing by registered users.

See this post on the Tracker Forums if you're interested.

version 2.5.206.0 release - 11-10-2012

• Resolved issue with handling util.printd that caused issues with some forms. (13905)
• Resolved issue with decoding some jpeg images. (T#1582, T#1635) (15351)
• Resolved rare issue with shades that caused the Viewer to crash. (T#1636).
• Resolved rare issue when loading some dynamic XFA forms. (T#1614).
• Viewer doesn't allow the use of encryption certificates for digital signatures.(T#1565)
• Resolved issue when viewer signature invalidates certifying documents making unnecessary changes. (T#1565)
• Resolved issue with getting day of week in js. (T#1574)
• Fixed issue with printing watermark annotations.(T#1656)
• Fixed issue with large spool file(s)+ generated when printing via Simple Viewer SDK. (T#1653)
• Self-signed certificates created by the Viewer now use SHA256 algorithm.
• Improved support for certificates with SHA256 algorithms and certificates on smartcards and USB sticks.
• Viewer now performs expiration and revocation checks for certificates in PDF documents. (T#1233)
• Changed algorithm of PCL printers detection. Some PCL drivers may have had issues when printing rotated images (T#1617, 1598, 1637, 1628). For PCL printers the Viewer now 'normalizes' such images.
• Added support of 'specific' annotation borders. (T#1655)

version 2.5.207.0 release - 12-11-2012

• Fixed an issue with submitting FDF as XFDF. (T# 1677)
• Fixed an issue with printing on custom paper sizes. (15306)
• Resolved issue with annot.quads property
• Support of XFA images located

version 2.5.208.0 release - 19-1-2013

• Fixed reported issue related to security.decoding corrupted JPEG streams in PDF files.
• Resolved issue with form calculation that may occur in some forms.

version 2.5.210.0 release - 25-02-2013

• Fixed issue with possible crash on some XFA files.
• Fixed issue when changing exclusive mode for tools via ActiveX.

version 2.5.209.0 release - 19-02-2013

• Corrected - doc.getNthFieldName function, now returns correct field.
• Fixed issue with link's border width when link style is an underline with default border width. (12164, 15693)
• Resolved issue jumping to wrong position from bookmarks in same conditions.
• Fixed rare issue with decoding JBIG2 streams.
• Implement function doc.mailDoc. (16494)
• Fixed color conversion on printing that may cause issues on some printers.

PDF-XChange Editor v3.0.301 is now out:
http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor
This is to be the successor to PDF-VChange Viewer and is intended to offer all the same features as the viewer with full editing facilities. Much of these in the free version. At the moment, although they call it the 'Gold' release, some features from viewer 2.5 have not yet been implemented and it is still a little buggy. I had big issues with 2.5 with semiconductor datasheets which rendered badly, Editor shows them correctly.

Originally posted by davews:

At the moment, although they call it the 'Gold' release, some features from viewer 2.5 have not yet been implemented and it is still a little buggy.

Bugs are expected with new releases, but the large number of missing features make this far from a Gold release — it barely deserves a bronze label yet. It does look nice, but I wouldn't recommend it yet as an alternative to version 2.5 unless you need to edit PDF files.