If you have any specific questions about PDF Expert I am here to answer.
Personally, being MSc student and writing my dissertation I am happy with PDF Expert, I have GR and iAnnotate tho.
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iAnnotate PDF Vs. GoodReader for reading and annotating
- Thread starter j-a-x
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If you have any specific questions about PDF Expert I am here to answer.
Personally, being MSc student and writing my dissertation I am happy with PDF Expert, I have GR and iAnnotate tho.
I haven't tried annotating in Good Reader and I don't have PDF Expert, but iAnnotate has tabs (for multiple pdfs) and bookmarking, and the searches are fast on my iPad 2. The UI is good and usable, but has a slight learning curve.
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There was similar question before. PDF Expert has list of 5 most 'recent' docs you've opened and bookmarks. We didn't make tabs for different documents to keep speed and avoid crashes.
Feel free to ask more questions.
Any (updated) impressions on those apps? I was about to buy one now, but couldnt decide on which; goodreader or iAnnotate (or pdf expert)
This thread seemed the perfect resource, but as someone mentioned, all the apps were updated numerous times since the start of this thread.
Any input you might have would appreciated.
Many thanks
Many articles are protected PDFs, and GoodReader can still annotate them, and export an annotated [flattened] article. I've had problems with iAnnotate on some articles. This is essential for academic annotations...
disappointed with PDF Expert annotations
I've been using iAnnotate for quite a while on the iPad and generally like it a lot. This is my main use of the iPad, taking notes on journal articles and grading students' papers.
But, one downside of iAnnotate is that it appears that they have not kept up to date with their iPhone version of the program. The iPhone version, which I haven't used in ages, lacks some of the newer features of the iPad version, most importantly syncing with Dropbox.
I came across this forum and based on the info decided to try downloading PDF Expert to my iPhone. I figured it would give me the iPhone functionality I needed and meanwhile let me test out the program in case it was worth getting for my iPad as well. I don't expect to do a ton of annotating on my little iPhone, but it's nice to have that option because it means I can get some work done no matter where I am.
I've only played around with PDF Expert for a few minutes, but I've already identified two issues that are deal-breakers. First, the process of creating an annotation in PDF Expert is way too clunky: tap and hold until the menu comes up, but the hold only selects a small portion of text so grab onto one of the tiny (especially on an iphone) handles to expand the selection, then tap on the menu to choose the type of annotation you want. And if you want a different color tap on the annotation again, choose colors, and choose the new color. Way too many steps to do over and over again. I like iAnnotate's approach of selecting a tool and creating as many annotations as you want with that tool until you turn off that tool.
The second issue is that there are no options for freehand tools (e.g. pencil tool). I use the pencil tool quite a bit (stars next to important points, arrows, etc). Also, some of the articles I read are old-school pdfs or scans of books where there is no OCR'd text to highlight. In those cases freehand tools (pencil tool or even better iAnnotate's new freehand highlighter) are the only options. iAnnotate also has a lot more options for different types of tools, colors, and customizing the toolbar.
So, although I appreciate having a program on my iPhone that syncs easily with Dropbox I'm going to stick with iAnnotate on my iPad. iAnnotate is not perfect but it's improving with each update and seems to be way ahead in terms of annotations. It's possible other apps are better on other fronts, perhaps forms which I rarely use.
I've been using iAnnotate for quite a while on the iPad and generally like it a lot. This is my main use of the iPad, taking notes on journal articles and grading students' papers.
But, one downside of iAnnotate is that it appears that they have not kept up to date with their iPhone version of the program. The iPhone version, which I haven't used in ages, lacks some of the newer features of the iPad version, most importantly syncing with Dropbox.
I came across this forum and based on the info decided to try downloading PDF Expert to my iPhone. I figured it would give me the iPhone functionality I needed and meanwhile let me test out the program in case it was worth getting for my iPad as well. I don't expect to do a ton of annotating on my little iPhone, but it's nice to have that option because it means I can get some work done no matter where I am.
I've only played around with PDF Expert for a few minutes, but I've already identified two issues that are deal-breakers. First, the process of creating an annotation in PDF Expert is way too clunky: tap and hold until the menu comes up, but the hold only selects a small portion of text so grab onto one of the tiny (especially on an iphone) handles to expand the selection, then tap on the menu to choose the type of annotation you want. And if you want a different color tap on the annotation again, choose colors, and choose the new color. Way too many steps to do over and over again. I like iAnnotate's approach of selecting a tool and creating as many annotations as you want with that tool until you turn off that tool.
The second issue is that there are no options for freehand tools (e.g. pencil tool). I use the pencil tool quite a bit (stars next to important points, arrows, etc). Also, some of the articles I read are old-school pdfs or scans of books where there is no OCR'd text to highlight. In those cases freehand tools (pencil tool or even better iAnnotate's new freehand highlighter) are the only options. iAnnotate also has a lot more options for different types of tools, colors, and customizing the toolbar.
So, although I appreciate having a program on my iPhone that syncs easily with Dropbox I'm going to stick with iAnnotate on my iPad. iAnnotate is not perfect but it's improving with each update and seems to be way ahead in terms of annotations. It's possible other apps are better on other fronts, perhaps forms which I rarely use.
Thanks for the help everyone,
Several of my buddies are using iAnnotate which is a solid performer no doubt. I spent a lot of time playing with it. No experience on GoodReader. After a week or so of reading reviews, I decided to buy PDF Expert and give it a try. If you check out the developers website, PDF Expert includes all the same features as ReadleDocs which is essentially, GoodReader.
I have only used the PDF annotation programs on the iPad (no iphone experience) and overall am very satisfied with PDF Expert. I felt the the annotation interface was simpler and more intuitive than iAnnotate. I also like that you can actually fill PDF forms naturally if they are developed in a fillable format. The tab'ed browsing feature is not there, but I felt that PDF Expert was faster at switching between PDFs using the recent menu than iAnnotate using tabs. For all intensive purposes the lack of tabs is really not an issue. I asked the developer about it and he says that it was designed to open and perform well with really large PDF files which is why tabs are not used.
Also my buddies and I ran a few comparison tests between iAnnotate and PDF Expert. We used the same large PDF files and conducted word searches using identical iPad2's. PDF Expert was faster.
The biggest feature for me was the file management support in PDF Expert. Like iAnnotate, you get itunes and dropbox support. But you also get GoogleDocs, ftp, webdav, and a bunch of other file (cloud type) server support. The Wifi Drive works great and is much easier way to transfer files and build folders than using iTunes.
Lastly, the final deciding factor for my work...Bookmarks and Table of Contents. Now I'm not an expert but I could not figure out how to see the PDF file's built-in TOC in iAnnotate. PDF Expert quickly in one button push can show you the document's TOC, any of your personal bookmarks or tabs, and any annotations, which allow you to quickly turn the page to that portion of the document. Its really simple and fast. This is important if you want to make your own bookmarks and still be able to simultaneously access the TOC.
NOTE: I personally felt highlighting was more natural and realistic in PDF Expert rather than the traditional iOS way of highlighting.
Hope this helps!
Several of my buddies are using iAnnotate which is a solid performer no doubt. I spent a lot of time playing with it. No experience on GoodReader. After a week or so of reading reviews, I decided to buy PDF Expert and give it a try. If you check out the developers website, PDF Expert includes all the same features as ReadleDocs which is essentially, GoodReader.
I have only used the PDF annotation programs on the iPad (no iphone experience) and overall am very satisfied with PDF Expert. I felt the the annotation interface was simpler and more intuitive than iAnnotate. I also like that you can actually fill PDF forms naturally if they are developed in a fillable format. The tab'ed browsing feature is not there, but I felt that PDF Expert was faster at switching between PDFs using the recent menu than iAnnotate using tabs. For all intensive purposes the lack of tabs is really not an issue. I asked the developer about it and he says that it was designed to open and perform well with really large PDF files which is why tabs are not used.
Also my buddies and I ran a few comparison tests between iAnnotate and PDF Expert. We used the same large PDF files and conducted word searches using identical iPad2's. PDF Expert was faster.
The biggest feature for me was the file management support in PDF Expert. Like iAnnotate, you get itunes and dropbox support. But you also get GoogleDocs, ftp, webdav, and a bunch of other file (cloud type) server support. The Wifi Drive works great and is much easier way to transfer files and build folders than using iTunes.
Lastly, the final deciding factor for my work...Bookmarks and Table of Contents. Now I'm not an expert but I could not figure out how to see the PDF file's built-in TOC in iAnnotate. PDF Expert quickly in one button push can show you the document's TOC, any of your personal bookmarks or tabs, and any annotations, which allow you to quickly turn the page to that portion of the document. Its really simple and fast. This is important if you want to make your own bookmarks and still be able to simultaneously access the TOC.
NOTE: I personally felt highlighting was more natural and realistic in PDF Expert rather than the traditional iOS way of highlighting.
Hope this helps!
I noticed that iAnnotste has not had an update since Feb 28, 2011 and that there were a lot of critical reviews after the version 1.4 release. Is it a stable usable product in it's current release?
Does the company typically do more frequent updates and bug fixes?
Can you paste a link to a file in iAnnotate to other apps like you can with GoodReader?
How is its document organization features? I have hundreds of files in GoodReader and find that it is getting increasingly difficult to keep the organized so that I can quickly find a file.
Does the company typically do more frequent updates and bug fixes?
Can you paste a link to a file in iAnnotate to other apps like you can with GoodReader?
How is its document organization features? I have hundreds of files in GoodReader and find that it is getting increasingly difficult to keep the organized so that I can quickly find a file.
iAnnotate updates
It's difficult to tell if iAnnotate is stable as they closed down their forum and moved to an impenetrable and rarely updated support site. It's a great product but without community support it is difficult recommend.
Unless anyone knows where iAnnotate users gather...?
David
It's difficult to tell if iAnnotate is stable as they closed down their forum and moved to an impenetrable and rarely updated support site. It's a great product but without community support it is difficult recommend.
Unless anyone knows where iAnnotate users gather...?
David
Actually, there is a free-hand drawing (pencil) tool in PDF Expert for iPad.
Well, we had to make a choice between clean and simple interface and the number of steps for annotations. There is a trade-off. So far, we believe that this is the best and intuitive way of annotating (by tapping on text and highlighting it) with the given clean and simple UI. But thanks for your opinion. The major update is coming soon. It will be the most powerful PDF solution for iPad !
@bizringer, Thank you for support! Stay tuned.
I use GoodReader and I almost bought iAnnotate last night (for the toolbar and ease of highlighting feature), but I'm glad I didn't because GoodReader just released an update that gives you a toolbar that you can pin to the screen.
You can now highlight text by drawing over the text with your finger, just like iAnnotate. No more having to press and hold, and drag to highlight, and then text. You also get tabs now so that you can easily switch between frequently used pdfs.
You can now highlight text by drawing over the text with your finger, just like iAnnotate. No more having to press and hold, and drag to highlight, and then text. You also get tabs now so that you can easily switch between frequently used pdfs.
The latest version of GoodReadeer is a very nice update. The tabs are very convenient for moving quickly between documents. The annotation related improvements make using annotations more efficient. I think that iAnnotate still has an edge over GR on annotations, but not enough to make a real difference for my usage. GR also seems to release updates more frequently so I think they will continue to close any gaps.
I wish GR would add tagging functionality, which iAnnotate already has. As I try to go paperless for my job, I find that I have so many documents in GR that I could really use a feature like tagging to help better organize and find documents that I need to reference, read, or review.
For my purposes, the major limitation with iAnnotate is the number of file types that it can't display. I think it can only handle PDF and with experimental features turned on it can convert some versions of Word and PowerPoint files into PDF. GR seems to be able to display almost any file type, e.g., PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, scalable vector graphics, RTF, HTML, zip (unzips by creating folder with file name and placing contents of the zip file in the folder). A couple of other iAnnotate limitations (I could not figure it out if it has these features; GR does) - it does not appear to be able to rename a folder and it does not appear to be able to tag multiple files and then move them as a group to another folder.
I own GoodReader, iAnnotate, ReaddleDocs, and iFiles for iPad. I keep trying these type of apps but so far only GoodReader meets my minimum requirements. Some reviewers don't care for the GoodReader interface, but I find that it is very easy to learn how to use and it is full featured.
I wish GR would add tagging functionality, which iAnnotate already has. As I try to go paperless for my job, I find that I have so many documents in GR that I could really use a feature like tagging to help better organize and find documents that I need to reference, read, or review.
For my purposes, the major limitation with iAnnotate is the number of file types that it can't display. I think it can only handle PDF and with experimental features turned on it can convert some versions of Word and PowerPoint files into PDF. GR seems to be able to display almost any file type, e.g., PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, scalable vector graphics, RTF, HTML, zip (unzips by creating folder with file name and placing contents of the zip file in the folder). A couple of other iAnnotate limitations (I could not figure it out if it has these features; GR does) - it does not appear to be able to rename a folder and it does not appear to be able to tag multiple files and then move them as a group to another folder.
I own GoodReader, iAnnotate, ReaddleDocs, and iFiles for iPad. I keep trying these type of apps but so far only GoodReader meets my minimum requirements. Some reviewers don't care for the GoodReader interface, but I find that it is very easy to learn how to use and it is full featured.
You are correct. iAnnotate can do a full text search across all PDFs in your library while GoodReader can only search the contents of the PDF that you are viewing. I am not sure, but I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that iAnnotate can only view PDF files while GoodReader can view many file types.
i did not know that. how fast is the search? in gr, it is pretty slow in one file. even if it could do a couple of hundred, at that speed, it is useless.
Does anyone know if any of the products has the ability to open a password protected PDF?
Thanks!
Thanks!
As a university student, I've been looking around for an app that could replace and save money from printing hundreds of papers for all the reading and I'm quite surprised there isn't that many refined apps out there right now.
What i needed was an app that would be like my typical 'folder' i used to carry with all my printed documents. so i needed an app that could store and organize all my work files (pdf, doc). a 'finder' style interface to organize documents to their subjects. and free-hand annotating tools to annotate documents as most of my pdf documents are from scanned books and not OCR.
Been researching quite some time on other forums and reviews of the programs and it came down between iAnnotate and PDF Expert, both i thought were quite expensive.In the end, i decided to go with PDF Expert because the UI looked more refined, but also because of their customer service and they have someone here reading our comments!
After using it for a while, I am fairly satisfied with the app but i could see why many people could choose it over iAnnotate which has more flexibility and features.
One of the things which could improve is having presets of annotating styles on the menu bar (which i think iAnnotate does) - such as 1.yellow highlighter 2.red solid line 3.black solid line etc. - it is quite bothersome to have to manually pick the color, the thickness and then the opacity of annotating tool.
Also it would be nice to have the ability to see the pdf pages in thumbnail on like a side bar so you could quickly find the page you want rather than having to flick through each page until you find it.
What i needed was an app that would be like my typical 'folder' i used to carry with all my printed documents. so i needed an app that could store and organize all my work files (pdf, doc). a 'finder' style interface to organize documents to their subjects. and free-hand annotating tools to annotate documents as most of my pdf documents are from scanned books and not OCR.
Been researching quite some time on other forums and reviews of the programs and it came down between iAnnotate and PDF Expert, both i thought were quite expensive.In the end, i decided to go with PDF Expert because the UI looked more refined, but also because of their customer service and they have someone here reading our comments!
After using it for a while, I am fairly satisfied with the app but i could see why many people could choose it over iAnnotate which has more flexibility and features.
One of the things which could improve is having presets of annotating styles on the menu bar (which i think iAnnotate does) - such as 1.yellow highlighter 2.red solid line 3.black solid line etc. - it is quite bothersome to have to manually pick the color, the thickness and then the opacity of annotating tool.
Also it would be nice to have the ability to see the pdf pages in thumbnail on like a side bar so you could quickly find the page you want rather than having to flick through each page until you find it.
It is really fast, I have hundreds of docs in IA, among them was my boarding pass buried deep somewhere in my library. I found it in 2 seconds.
I am a big fan of IA, I use it for everything, save as PDF any interesting article online (yes, you can create PDF files from a webpage), read articles and annotate, it is my e-library. The only annoying thing is that when you search a word in a document, you cannot highlight them all and then scroll down ... and results are actually not highlighted, but marked using a kind of box with yellow borders that I really hate. Small things that someday will be fixed, yet the app is impressive, without it my iPad would be useless.
PDF expert has just had an update and I'm really happy with it. Having more annotation tools and easier to select between them, and to see thumbnail of all pages! Haven't really used much of it yet but I'm more glad now I picked it over iannotate for now!
i use goodreader and i am quite pleased with it, but i have not used iannotate, so i cannot compare the two. my understanding, though, is that for reading and annotating they do not differ significantly.
however, overall, my impression is that iannotate is a more robust program with a lot of features goodreader lacks, such as global searches.
so, why do i stick with goodreader? mainly because it syncs with sugarsync, my backup service. if iannotate provided this option, i would probably switch (or at least consider it). there is nothing wrong with goodreader. i would just enjoy more options
however, overall, my impression is that iannotate is a more robust program with a lot of features goodreader lacks, such as global searches.
so, why do i stick with goodreader? mainly because it syncs with sugarsync, my backup service. if iannotate provided this option, i would probably switch (or at least consider it). there is nothing wrong with goodreader. i would just enjoy more options