The Manicou Report

Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader

My first tech tep for today is about a PDF reader called Foxit Reader. If Internet Explorer is your Granny’s browser, then Adobe Reader is your Grandpa’s PDF reader. Foxit Reader is a “free” PDF reader produced by the Foxit Software Company.

Foxit Reader’s Many Features

I should say that I find this very useful because I depend a lot on PDFs everyday. One of my biggest problems with Adobe Reader is the inability for me to set my own bookmarks and the inability to mark up the text in any fashion. Being a lit student and having to use and examine a lot of eBooks in PDF, I find Foxit Reader valuable. If I’m reading an eBook using Adobe Reader, how am I supposed to remember where I stopped? Searching for an alternative led me to Foxit Reader.

Foxit Reader’s Highlighting Tool

Foxit reader lets the reader/user perform a number of tricks not possible with Adobe Reader. With Foxit I can highlight, underline, and strikeout text. It even includes a typewriter tool and a caret annotation tool. Each of these tools allows you to attach a note to the annotation made which can be quickly viewed by double-clicking on the annotation. If you are a lit student and you use a lot of PDFs like I do, this is a great tool. (By the way, the dull yellow colour of the background is my choice; it makes reading a little easier on the eyes.)

Unfortunately there is no way to bookmark my pages but I work around this by putting notes both at the top of the document and the point where I left off. The note at the top is where I’ll type in the page number.

Foxit Note

However (yes there is a however), since the free version is considered an “evaluation” copy of Foxit Reader, if you save the PDF with the annotations made, there will be a permanent notice at the top of each annotated page with that says “Edited by Foxit Reader…”. Even if you remove the annotation, the note stays. So consider this when deciding between Foxit and Adobe Reader. An easy way to avoid marking up your PDFs is to make a duplicate of the file in use and store it before making any annotations.

You can download Foxit Reader here.

PDF reDirect

PDF reDirect Screenshot

Since we’re on the topic of PDFs, my second and last tech tip is for a programme called PDF reDirect that can turn most any document into a PDF. All you do is “print” the document from the file menu choosing PDF reDirect as your printer and presto, instant PDF. That could be opened even in Adobe Reader. This helps a lot if you are a Project Gutenberg junkie like I am and you hate to read from notepad and HTML files.

You can download PDF reDirect here.

I hope I have made your lives even a little easier.