Opens your PDF documents, displays their content and sets bookmarks, adds comments, validates signatures and embeds text-to-speech support. The tool also includes security features, such as the ability to automatically stop JavaScripts from executing their code or to prevent URLs from being accessed directly from the PDF.
Though originally devised as a closed file for printing houses, PDF files are now not only ubiquitous but also the most popular format for exchanging information in a secure yet flexible way. As one of the most popular free PDF tools, Foxit Reader is all you’ll need to view, read, and annotate any PDF document securely and effectively, and sign and share your own PDFs just as safely.
The program is both simple and intuitive, especially if you are already familiar with the ribbon design present in all Office tools. The look and feel of the program’s interface and its ribbon will immediately remind you of the latest versions of Word or Excel, thus reducing the interface’s learning curve to a minimum.
You will find basic viewing options, such as the fit-to-page feature, the “zoom lens”, the rotation tool, and – and this is a feature you won’t come across with very often – a “reflow” option. This feature breaks the PDF’s fixed layout principle and performs a temporary transformation of your document into a text-based file that the program’s viewer can reflow according to your needs. This can make an excellent accessibility tool for those who find it difficult to read PDF files with small-sized fonts and long fixed lines.
Not being an editing tool per se (Foxit has a specific tool for that), you won’t find many features to help you “alter” the content of a PDF file. What the program offers you in this department is the capability to insert new text and images anywhere in the page, though always on top of the existing text and images. This is really useful to create margin annotations or comments close to (or on top of) pictures, though you also have a specific tool to annotate images. Also, you can highlight text in any color and add as many bookmarks as you wish anywhere in the document.
When it comes to signing and protecting your PDF files, Foxit Reader allows you to use your handwritten signature or make use of eSignature to verify digital ones. AIP decryption and encryption are also available, even if the file is on a SharePoint server, as the whole tool seamlessly works with Microsoft specifications and protocols.
Foxit Reader is an excellent tool to have installed on all your devices and thus make the most of your PDF documents regardless of where you are. It is everything you’ll ever need to view, read, customize, and share your PDFs securely.
v9.5 [Apr 10, 2019]
New Features in Foxit PhantomPDF 9.5.0.20723:
- Epona DMSforLegal Integration: Use PhantomPDF to directly open/check out PDF files from Epona DMSforLegal and after making changes save/check them in to Epona DMSforLegal.
- Accessibility Features:
-Offer a visual and more efficient way to change reading order directly in the document view by drawing areas around the desired content and setting the reading order for the areas.
-Tag content as note, reference, and background/artifact with the Reading Ordercommand.
-Create a link tag automatically when creating link annotation from the context menu of the selected text in a tagged PDF.
- Viewing Article in PDF: Define a navigational path (or an article thread) for articles that arrange text content in multiple columns and pages, so that users can skim through the PDF like in a print newspaper or magazine, focusing on a specific article and ignoring the rest.
- Smooth Line Art: Provide an option to smooth lines when viewing a PDF that include CAD drawings, which also makes it faster to open the PDF.
- The Whiteout Tool: Allow user to simply and securely erase any content permanently to white background from a PDF with one click like an eraser, leaving no trace behind.
- Add pen and touch support to PhantomPDF for Microsoft Surface Pro.
Improvements in Foxit PhantomPDF 9.5.0.20723:
- Find & Search optimization
-Search and replace all the results instantly with the replacement text.
-Add additional criteria (document properties) in Advanced Search for searches across multiple PDFs and PDF indexes.
-Sort instances in the search results by date modified, filename, or location when searching files in a folder.
- Signatures and stamps enhancements
-Customize the appearance of digital signatures by drawing or importing a PDF file of your handwritten signature.
-Add an option to set the current size of the signature as default when placing a signature with the PDF Sign feature and the ability to place a signature or stamp by simply dragging a rectangle and filling in with the selected signature or stamp proportionally.
- Improvements in comparing files
Provide a much more clear and accurate compare result after comparison.
- For a PDF digitally signed several times, with the capability to view each signed version of the PDF, you can also view the changes made to each signed version, and compare a signed version to the current version you have.
- Enhance the HTML to PDF feature to directly create tagged PDF files by carrying over tags and other accessible information such as alt-text for images from the HTML file.
- Add shortcut keys for switching quickly between files in the multi-tab reading mode.
- Move and resize redaction markups before applying redactions.
- Insert entire PDF files including the file attachments to a document.
- Add an option to auto-detect portrait/landscape when printing PDFs.
- Remember last settings when organizing pages including rotating, extracting, and splitting.
- Add JavaScript APIs in more usage scenarios including modifying the user interface, creating/modifying PDFs, and printing.
- Some other user-friendly enhancements.
Issues Addressed in Foxit PhantomPDF 9.5.0.20723:
- Fixed an issue where some commenting tools could not work together with the Read Out Loud feature.
- Fixed an issue where the OCR running was very slow on a certain PDF document.
