I’ve always been pretty big on the Foxit Reader because it’s not only free, but it takes under 3 seconds to open up. When you’re trying to read a PDF the last thing you want to do is wait forever for it to load, and that’s why Adobe Acrobat is the last thing that I recommend for people to use.
I do realize that some of you have had troubles with printing in Foxit, and today I want to introduce you to a different PDF reader that will hopefully solve your problems. PDF-XChange Viewer has all of the features you would expect from the even the best PDF reader, plus it has a few things that you can only find in a purchased copy of Foxit!
I’m sure you’re wondering what this could possibly do that your copy of Foxit doesn’t include. Have you ever tried to add a sticky note or type some text on an existing PDF in Foxit? If you have you’ll see a warning that says an “evaluation mark” will be added to the document to signal that you haven’t purchased the program. With PDF-XChange Viewer you can draw, add notes, type text, and do all kinds of things with no unwanted marks being placed on your document:
But then there’s the speed issue, right? After all, we ditched Acrobat because of how darn slow the thing was. Don’t worry, you’re not sacrificing speed for features this time around. In my tests it opened just as fast as Foxit, or in the worst case it took one second longer. One thing that I didn’t like was the splash screen, but you can disable that in the options. Doing so also appears to make the program load faster.
The tabbed interface is also really nice for when you have multiple documents open. PDF-XChange Viewer has a feature like Internet Explorer 7 where you can view all of the open documents in a grid-like fashion. It will show a thumbnail for each of them, which is often much easier to distinguish between than just file names.
Did I say how good this program looks, too? They’ve definitely got a leg up Foxit when it comes to graphics, and I think that’s apparent just by looking at how nice the preferences screen looks:
For the time being I’m going to be switching away from Foxit because I really like this program better. It looks nicer, has more features, and is the same performance-wise as Foxit. I’ll let you be your own judge, but I think you’ll agree with me that this is currently the best pdf reader.
Does this program require installation? That’s one thing I really like about Foxit is that it doesn’t.
It does require installation. I came across it a few months ago, but only switched after the latest build, which finally fixed an issue with print job sizes. The tabbed view and thumbnail pane do it for me. It now shows Foxit annotations properly, and vice-versa. Text is a bit fuzzy on screen, but I don’t see it in printed copies.
I love Sumatra PDF portable the best. I don’t need all those extra features. I just want to read it.
Gah, that is blasphemy! Foxit Reader is a god!
Did you try Adobe Reader after version 7? 7 was indeed horrendously slow, but the latest version is nearly as fast as Foxit (with better compatibility for free). On my 3-year old PC it takes 4s to open a PDF with a “cold” start and less than 1s to open the same PDF with a “warm” start. That’s why I switched back.
PDF-XChange Viewer looks like a really interesting alternative though. I wonder what it doesn’t support or has problems with. If it’s less than Foxit, that would be really good.
Foxit as a zip download is 2.5mb while pdfx is 13mb. Haven’t installed either to ascertain the finished size, although acrobat 7 download size is 31mb and installed is 265mb plus whatever it throws out to other places on the disk.
Miles
Hello!
Useless! In Windows 2000 and up I use Adobe Reader 8.1.1 which
is OK, in Windows 98 Foxit Reader because PDF-XChange Viewer does
not work …
Regards, Roman
Tried pdf-Xchange; does not show pictures correctly, (has white lines through picture). Same pdf File shows correctly in Foxit and Adobe 7.07.
Do not recommend, it also is a huge file download.
Great find Ryan!
I love the tabbed documents…Interface is also pretty slick.
First PDF file I tried to open, it popped up and error and wouldn’t load. Although it was a pretty intense PDF, and a pain to view it even in Foxit (god awful redraw time).
The PDF I was trying was a USGS map of the moon, located here:
[astrogeology.usgs.gov]
Really the annotation features are nice in both this and Foxit, but I could live without them. I guess I’ll have to try out Sumatra.
EDIT: I just loaded up Sumatra, and WOW!!! It handles this PDF very nicely. It even appears to have off screen compositing so it’s very smooth and fast to scroll around. I think I’ll use Sumatra from now on, and keep these other two around in case I need to do any annotation.
Hmmm… Won’t let me edit again, so I’ll have to double post. Check out the memory usage, not what I expected.
FoxitReader .. 8,972 K
PDFXCview … 42,264 K
SumatraPDF .. 13,660 K
PDF-XChange Viewer reconizes lithuanian letter “?” as “?”. That’s incorrect.
anyone have a direct download link their download page on their site doesn’t load at all!
I’ll stick with Adobe Reader. I really don’t think it takes long to start up. I admit that it did used to but that seems a long time a go now.
And besides, it will no doubt be the best PDF reader in terms of supporting all the different PDF features and languages.
[pdfxviewer.com]
At last, someone mention this software
I like it and works well for me. One negative thing, so far: the highlighted text is covered with the highlight when printed.
Otherwise the latest build is full of bugs!
Great software. Has a few bugs, but the developers respond very quickly in their forums to comments and bug reports.
I know it sounds stupid, but I’m sticking with Foxit just because I don’t like the name of this program. Why not name it PDF Exchange Viewer instead of PDF-XChange Viewer? That sounds way more professional.
Yes, it does require installation. I always installed Foxit anyways though, so it’s not that big of a deal for me.
That’s a nice solution for anyone looking for a stripped down PDF reader, but I prefer having some of the extra features out-of-the-box.
Adobe 8 preloads the software when Windows starts, which is why it is able to start so quickly. The other PDF readers don’t do that.
I’m surprised that Foxit is lower than Sumatra, which is quite impressive. I’m not surprised that the PDF-XChange Viewer is so high though because of the amount of features it offers.
I actually completely understand your thinking on that. In fact, I thought the same thing originally. They need to come up with something that is easier to remember.
I’m sticking with Foxit simply because it’s always worked great for me and I’ve never had any issues with it. Sometimes, if it’s not broken, there’s no need to fix it! That’s the way I feel about Foxit.
True, by default it’s doing that, but I’ve turned it off (removed the startup item). Still starts up fast
Downloaded the latest build of PDF-XChange Viewer (1.030) and had none of the problems others mentioned existed – and the bulk of the reason for the extra size of download mentioned by others was the very comprehensive Help file and PDF manual that’s included + the extra features that Foxit does not include by default and this one does – and their free !
So far so good – hope my early (excellent) impressions continue
Also – just noticed the PDF-XChange Viewer includes : JS support, J2K and also includes both 32 and 64 bit installers included in the one download !
I did see that 32-bit and 64-bit versions are included in one single download, which I find to be awesome.
On the downside: the installer file size is twice as big as it’d be if the versions were kept separate.
True, but posting two different versions seems to cause conversion sometimes. I frequently get asked by people whether they need to download 32-bit or 64-bit versions of applications because they don’t know what the difference is. This kind of takes care of that aspect. I wish that the information was provided in the browser’s useragent so that websites could do the checking for the users.
I liked PDF X change viewer. Some files which were created in photoshop as PDF will not open in Foxit. So I tried this one and it is pretty nice. The other features are also good. Start time is pretty short, and I love the interface and other tweak features. I am yet to find a problem with it.
5 stars from me.
I’ve been advocating PDF-X-Change Viewer since I first used it. Only thing that should go is the name, it just isn’t as catch as Foxit PDF Reader.
I was looking for a alternative to Foxit ever since the “update” utility statred to bug me. I will give PDF-xchange a try.