Beginner Builder series 75% done! will probably never be finished. :(

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Foxit Reader: Foxy Reader!

PDF's are pretty annoying. Ok, let me rephrase that: Adobe is pretty annoying. You're browsing along on the internet, you click a link, but -uh oh, it's a PDF! Now you have to wait while Adobe takes FOREVER to start up, and eat up your system resources. OR DO YOU?!

Enter Foxit Reader. Foxit Reader does the same thing as Adobe Reader, only better. Here's a few reasons why:

-Small, in comparison: 6.52mb minus uninstaller, 6.61mb with. Not the daintiest PDF reader (if you want something smaller, try Cool PDF Reader), but compared to Adobe's 20mb, and its 10-20 second (at least) startup times, Foxit seems microscopic.

-Thumbnails for pages: To easily navigate, there's a pane with thumbnails of the pages. w00t.

-Firefox integration: Just like adobe, but with Foxit, and faster. You don't have to close Firefox to read a PDF, it opens right up in your browser.

-Portable: Yes, it's portable. Just download the zip and extract it to a folder, and you're ready to go. Great if you're going to a computer that may contain Adobe.

One tiny little thing wrong.....

-Advertisement: Yeah, there's a full version and Foxit wants you to buy it. The catch is a very tiny ad at the top. Easily ignorable, which makes Foxit still easily worth it.

To be honest, I'm not the expert on PDFs. I only use them when I have to, so Foxit meets my needs easily. If you use PDFs more often, maybe you use a different reader with more features, but for simpletons like me, Foxit is good.

Visit Foxit Reader website for download.

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