A Much Improved Adobe Reader for Tablets Appears
A couple months ago I went into a small rant about how poorly many of the PDF readers available on tablet devices (iOS and Android) handled interactivity. When compared with other available software, Adobe’s candidate?Adobe Reader 10.1?ranked dead last.
I’m happy to report that Adobe Reader 10.2 just came out, and it’s much improved over the previous version. I don’t have time for a full review, but here are some of the improvements:
- Commenting, including Sticky Notes, a Freehand drawing tool, Highlight, Strikethrough and Underline tools
- The ability to fill out (and email return) simple Acrobat forms
- A Signature tool to add a signature with your finger
- Integration with Adobe EchoSign
- Support for PDF links (both internal and URL)
- Recognition of document security
- Improvements in memory and performance issues
Not everything is fixed, and some features are missing (e.g., multimedia) but it’s a tremendous improvement, and definitely worth checking out?especially because it’s free.
Shown below are visual examples of a few of the new features:
Adobe Reader 10.2 is available both for iOS and Android devices.
Can’t wait to try it out! It’s about time … grr.
Here’s the iTunes link for more info:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-reader/id469337564?mt=8
It is good to see that they are slowly updating the app.
They did update the forms, but calculations are ignored. Hopefully the next update will fix that along with video support.
But… it still has issues with showing overprint correct, so still unsuitable for a printing workflow…
(just checked the Android version with a few of the Ghent Output Suite patches)
Eddy
VIGC
Thanks for pointing that out, Eddy. Can you point us again to your page where you talk about the tests you did on different tablet PDF readers?
Yes, even buttons in a PDF (like next page, goto etc) work!
I made those buttons in zinDesign as well as some in Acrobat Pro. Good news indeed!
I’m glad you pointed out that version 10.1 ranked dead last – it’s the reason I turned to 3rd party software (from Readdle) a long time ago. And version 10.2 of the Adobe Reader still does less today than what PDF Expert did a year ago (e.g. JavaScript)… One of the few things the latter can’t do is dynamic forms (which is a real pity).
As much as I appreciate most of Adobe’s products to this day, I have become increasingly irritated by the cross-platform disparities, the cross-version UI redesigns, the lack of attention to customer feedback, and the time lag in keeping their own products on the OS X and iOS platforms up to date and state-of-the-art.
I truly hope that their decision to give up mobile Flash on one hand and Apple’s change of leadership on the other will lead to a better and more fruitful cooperation between the companies than in the past years. I see a LOT of untapped potential in a better integration of some of Adobe’s interesting technologies on mobile devices. From the few impressions I have gathered from the Adobe MAX videos, they MUST have realized by now what game changers mobile devices (and iDevices in particular) are for data capturing and content delivery.
So far (and IMHO), they allow others to beat them at their own game. But I’m convinced it is not too late, and I sincerely hope that CS 6 will prove it…
Steve, this is the page with an overview of our PDF viewer tests: https://www.graphicbrain.com/studies-by-vigc/pdf-viewers/
We’ve tested some more tools and the conclusion still stands: on tablets there is no tool that correctly displays a PDF (overprint is an issue).
Just this morning I found a pdf reader for iPad that will play video – an absolute must for the project I’m working on with two friend/client/business partners.
We are in no way prepared to plunk down the cash for the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Not when we’re testing a concept, and probably not with the audience we’re targeting. The revenue potential per product just isn’t there unless the tail on this deal is a lot shorter and fatter than we think.
I also find the idea of exporting to ePUB unacceptable,and I’m not thrilled with the idea of starting all over in iBooks Author. Besides – that’s based on Pages, which is, after all, a word processor and not a page-layout application. I believe the type choices are limited, and I don’t trust the typographical controls.
Plus, why exactly would I have upgraded past CS5 to use iBooks Author? We were sold CS6 on the basis of being able to publish to digital formats, not on the basis of being able to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of publishing to digital formats.
So if Adobe isn’t going to put out a version of Reader for iPad that can play multimedia – unlike the Reader on computers – I am thrilled that another company has stepped into the breach and fulfilled the promise of CS6 . Because otherwise the $700+ I dropped for the upgrade would have felt like a very poor investment indeed.
The app is EZpdfReader, and it’s on the iOS App Store. There’s also an Android version. It’s $3.99 for the iPad and half that for the iPhone.