My Geekdom

I hate Adobe Reader. I always have and it has only gotten worse over time. It started out being slow and now takes forever to open. Furthermore, I think the browser integration model is atrocious. You end up with things like a browser search button (which only works if you are not viewing PDF files) and an Adobe Reader search button (which only is visible when you are viewing PDF files). Similar issues exist for Save and Open functionality. The browser integration has also seemed to be buggy, frequently causing my Firefox to hang or misbehave (especially when searching).

Long ago I turned off the browser plug-ins. That way, at least my browser wouldn't hang during the slow startup of the Adobe Reader plug-in.

Adobe Reader, probably because of its long startup time, links all Adobe Reader windows together. That is, there is only one process. This includes in-browser as well as standalone windows. Kill one and you kill 'em all.

Now I have found the Foxit PDF reader (www.foxitsoftware.com). It is a tiny, small reader. On my Dell D600 Latitude laptop it starts up in a second or so. Every window is a separate process so, if one hangs (which it never has on me) you can kill it and the other windows are safe.

I'm not sure if it has a browser plug-in but I don't care. It has a very nice user interface (with the exception that the newer versions of the Adobe Reader search feature is better - Foxit's search feature is a modal dialog - blecch!!).

Foxit Software has a collection of editors and a "Pro" reader (has some interesting features including the ability to annotate/markup a PDF document), an editor that supports richer editing, and a few more programs. They have a Linux version in early access (no pricing to date but I assume there will be a free version as well).

I still have Adobe Reader on my system. I've had to use it once since installing Foxit Reader when Foxit Reader mis-displayed a PDF file (I can't remember the page). Other than that, Adobe Reader can RIP.