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Adobe Reader alternative?

J

Jon55

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 7, 2008
Messages
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What is a good alternative to Adobe Reader? I mean I love Adobe Readers interface and whatnot, but it seems pretty bloated for just reading PDFs (plus it installs a bunch of other crap with it). Anyway, what is a free awesome alternative to Adobe Reader.


Note: I did I search for this and came up empty (which is weird because I thought this would be covered).
 
Sumatra PDF ftw... tiny, ridiculously fast, portable - it's just one .exe file, that's it.
 
If you really like Adobe, they have a maintenance kit to generate a transform that allows you to restrict what gets installed. It will never be as light as those mentioned above, but you can get rid of a lot of the crap that comes along with the reader.
 
Anything but Acrobloat! I swear, you'd think Symantec bought them up around version 7..it's been "bloating" since.

Foxit PDF!
 
Another FoxIt vote here.

Never tried Sumatra PDF. Will have to check that out though in the future...
 
Sweet thanks guys! Don't know how I let Foxit slip under my radar for so long. One thing on the installation though, when installing there's an option to "agree to some licensing terms and install foxit toolbar" I deselected that of course and it claims free users won't be able to use Text Viewer and some other random software. Should I even bother being concerned? Again thanks a ton guys. :)
 
See, with Sumatra you don't have all that muss and fuss, it's a single .exe and that's it... open source ftw!!! :D
 
Joe Average said:
See, with Sumatra you don't have all that muss and fuss, it's a single .exe and that's it... open source ftw!!! :D
Click to expand...

In my use, Foxit ran circles around Sumatra when it comes to opening more complicated PDFs..and especially rendering speed and IMO rendering quality too.

I don't miss the days of MS-DOS with single .exe's very much.

I can't remember testing Sumatra through a web interface.

OP, as with installing any software..run through the install process slowly, unchecking the add-ons. Just like with Java, or Macromedia, or...whatever.
 
You don't need the Foxit toolbar, but the newest version has a Firefox plugin that lets you open the PDF in a tab in your brower. You can select to install it when it updates.
 
drdeutsch said:
You don't need the Foxit toolbar, but the newest version has a Firefox plugin that lets you open the PDF in a tab in your brower. You can select to install it when it updates.
Click to expand...

I probably should have been clearer. I could care less about the toolbar, what I mainly was wondering about was the "Text Viewer" app and whatnot. But so far I have found everything is working perfectly so I don't think it's even an issue anyway.
 
Foxit

I used Foxit and Sumatra for awhile and Sumatra barfs on a lot of PDFs, Foxit I have yet to have an issue with and it is extremely quick and lightweight.
 
Ok, so new problem.

I completely uninstalled Adobe Reader, and then installed Foxit. It's set as my default .pdf viewer but when I try to open .pdf's in Firefox I simply get a blank page (yes, I have the latest versions of both).
 
Jon55 said:
Ok, so new problem.

I completely uninstalled Adobe Reader, and then installed Foxit. It's set as my default .pdf viewer but when I try to open .pdf's in Firefox I simply get a blank page (yes, I have the latest versions of both).
Click to expand...

Guessing it's not registering properly as your default PDF viewer. Uninstall and reinstall again..and make sure going through the install, the checkbox is checked so that it's your default PDF viewer.

Next..open the program and manually open a PDF file..see if that works. Ensuring Foxit reader itself is functioning properly. If it is...we've likely narrowed it down to Firefox not working with it. I remember running across this issue a few months ago at a client, their head facilities management guy had a problem opening PDFs in Firefox....if I recall, his old computer just had too many versions of Firefox in it over the years. I saved his bookmarks, uninstalled Firefox, deleted the proper FF directories..and reinstalled it. Then reinstalled Foxit..and all was well.
 
The newest Foxit doesn't open PDFs in Firefox by default. You have to run the update and install the "firefox plugin" from the Foxit update.

Have you done that? After I did that, my PDFs open in Firefox no problem.
 
Depending how much you use PDFs, you may want to keep Adobe installed. I have Foxit on all the computers for day-to-day usage, but now and then someone sends a PDF that, for whatever reason, either is rendered wrong in Foxit or just flat-out won't open.
 
drdeutsch said:
The newest Foxit doesn't open PDFs in Firefox by default. You have to run the update and install the "firefox plugin" from the Foxit update.

Have you done that? After I did that, my PDFs open in Firefox no problem.
Click to expand...

I did this after reading your post, and the Firefox plugin was red. I mean it installed, but there were a few items there in red, and it was one of them. Hopefully this doesn't mean it only works with registered non-free versions. Because when I closed Firefox, reopened it and tried opening a pdf I still get the same blank page.

I've check the installed plug-ins in Firefox and Foxit was listed.
 
Ok, so I completely uninstalled Foxit and reinstalled it, ran the updater, installed the Firefox plugin, and it works now. I have no idea what happened, and I don't care. :p Thanks again guys.
 
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