Open Source PDF Reader for Windows in a Single .Exe
We've always been fans of the free Foxit PDF reader here, but when I came across an open-source PDF viewer that was even more lightweight and simple, I immediately switched.
The Sumatra PDF viewer comes as one single .exe file, and is about as minimal as you can get… it launches in less than a second for me, and the clean interface is great.
But that's not the best part… it's got shortcut keys that are very similar to Gmail and Google Reader. (Except j and k are swapped for some unknown reason)
Here's the list of shortcut keys:
- space - scroll by screen
- backspace - scroll back by screen
- k - scroll by one line
- j - scroll back by one line
- Down - scroll by one line
- Up - scroll back by one line
- n - goto next page
- p - goto previous page
- Page Down - go to next page
- Page Up - go to previous page
- g - goto page
- q - quit
- + - zoom in
- - - zoom out
- r - reload PDF document
- <Shift> <Ctrl> + - rotate clockwise
- <Shift> <Ctrl> - - rotate counter-clockwise
- Home - go to first page
- End - go to last page
Just being able to navigate a PDF with the same keys I use all the time was enough for me.
The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 08/8/07 and tagged with: Windows, Windows Vista
You mean "lightweight" for UI, don't you?
But I'm really concerned about resource usage.
And that's the reason I strongly prefer Foxit!
Try opening PDFs on both programs and compare the memory usage!
The difference is bigger if you open PDFs with more than 4MB.
Hugs from Brazil!
Thank you for this great find and gem!!
Thanks for this info. i was searching google for this pdf and I came across your site and article. I'll try using this since adobe is heavy on the disk space. for foxit, it's ok but I'm willing to give this new pdf reader a shot.