Almost everyone of us have heard about PDF which is also known as the Portable Document Format which was created by Adobe Systems to represent documents in a device-independent environment.

PDF is a document format that is widely used. Before the creation of Foxit PDF Reader ^[1] the popular source of reading PDF document was Adobe Acrobat Reader which uses a enormous amount of memory (that is the one reason I uninstalled it and am sticking with Foxit) and is also quite slow at times.

Here is what WikiPedia says about PDF

The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a device-independent and display resolution-independent fixed-layout document format. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a 2-D document (and, with Acrobat 3-D, embedded 3-D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2-D vector graphics that compose the document.

For me PDF format is very important as all the documentation I do, I finally convert it to a PDF document using a plugin Microsoft Office has provided to convert a Document into PDF format.

Many a times I am stuck on a machine which does not have any viewer to view PDF files. In such circumstances I usually fall back to online PDF readers which allow me to view PDF documents online.

Here are few of the online PDF readers I have used in the past and feel are worth trying out. Of course if you want to convert your documents to different formats you can check out my earlier post about converting documents between different formats ^[2].

PDF Escape

PDFEscape ^[3] is a very good online PDF viewer and I was really impressed with the way the PDF documents are rendered to you. It feels just like you are reading the document in a regular PDF reader. It is highly recommended and addicting once you start using it.

Features

• Uploading documents from your desktop to the site and viewing them.
• Viewing a PDF from a web source.
• Creating a account to store your PDF documents.
• Opening the most recent PDF document you had viewed if you are registered.
• Allows you to edit PDF documents.
• Allows you to fill in forms like W9 etc online and save those.

Overall PDFEscape ^[3] is one of the best online PDF readers I have used till date.

Samurajdata

Though not one of the impressive lots it does the job quite OK. Though it messes up the images quite a bit. I would still say quite useful because of the bare site, load times are faster than others.

Needs to improve a lot with regards to image rendering within the PDF documents, but nevertheless a very handy site for low speed connections. If not for the image rendering it could be more than the best.

Features

• No frills web site
• Loads faster
• Keyboard shortcuts to navigate between pages

Do you use any other documents to view PDF files online, do let me know through your comments. I would definitely want to try out more online PDF viewers.