The Portable Document Format, which you know simply as PDF, is in fact a very good format for documents mainly due to four facts:

1. They’re usually significantly smaller compared to a DOC (especially if there are images within).
2. They look exactly the same no matter what OS you use.
3. It is true WYSIWYG concerning printers. What you see on screen is precisely what will print out on paper.
4. The likelihood of a PDF containing a virus and/or malicious scripting is slim to none. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.

Before getting into SumatraPDF and why I think it’s the best PDF viewer ever, here’s an explanation of why we hate PDF.

What we hate about PDFs aren’t the files themselves, but the reader applications.

I wholly believe that Adobe Reader is evil. Very evil. Why? Well, first of all it’s a 26MB installer file. For a document reader? Yes. What’s in that 26MB? A whole lot of crap you don’t need.

The crapola starts even before you download the file. You specifically have to uncheck a box so you don’t download the "Free McAfee Security Scan."

The Adobe Reader installer as far as I’m concerned tries every way to hijack your web browser by installing a ton of useless garbage. You have to go through the installation procedure very s-l-o-w-l-y, else it will put install a plugin in all your browsers. What happens after that is that on any attempt to load a PDF from a web page, all this CRAP loads up from Adobe Reader asking you a whole bunch of questions on first run, and worst of all loads the PDF directly in the browser. This absolutely scares the daylights out of people because they think the browser is crashing due to the fact Reader is so bloated, huge and takes forever even to get started. And in some instances the browser does crash because of Adobe Reader.

Adobe Reader is evil. Period.

The significantly smaller FoxIt Reader was a good alternative. But now it has promotional banner graphics inside the reader. Evil. And it tries to do the same browser hijack crap Adobe Reader does. Eeeevil. And you now have to very s-l-o-w-l-y go through the installation process just like with Adobe to make sure a bunch of crap (like, oh, I dunno, a useless toolbar) doesn’t get installed. Eeeeeeeeeevil.

FoxIt Reader is now also evil. Sad but true.

Going PDF reader-less

I hated PDF readers so much that I simply uninstalled them and used Google Docs to read my PDF files. That system reads them easily – but with one huge drawback: It’s not the easiest thing in the world to print a PDF out of Google Docs. You’re better off printing direct from a PDF document reader.

Enter SumatraPDF

SumatraPDF has an installer that is only 1.4MB in size. It is free and open source. It does not have any stupid toolbar installers in it. It does not try to hijack your web browsers. The only thing it will ask you is if you want it to be the default reader for PDF files – that’s it.

It is wonderful. All I ever wanted was to just view the PDFs I download, and that’s exactly what SumatraPDF does with no fuss whatsoever.

Can SumatraPDF read all PDF files? Mostly. The only ones it would have a problem with are the super-advanced type with intricate fill-in forms and whatnot. But other than that it will happily read just about any PDF file you load into it.

Example: Let’s say you downloaded Form W-4 from the IRS, which happens to be a PDF:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf

In SumatraPDF:

Loads perfectly. Prints perfectly. And that’s all you ever want out of a PDF document reader.

The only thing you ever hated about PDF files were the readers needed to view them. But after using SumatraPDF, you’ll happily dump FoxIt and Adobe to the curb.

SumatraPDF is the best PDF viewer ever because it opens PDF files with zero hassle and does so lightning quick; that’s why it’s the best (on Windows).

One of the best RSS feed readers out there is Google Reader. However one (very) longstanding complaint is that it has no ability to change the name of folders/tags. However there is a workaround, that being to "move" subscriptions from one tag to another. It’s sort of a long roundabout way of doing it, but it least it can be done.

Here’s how:

Above: I have two tags, that being Florida and keywords. These are two tags I custom made. I want to change keywords to tech keywords.

In Google Reader, I click Settings at the extreme top right.

On the next page I click the Subscriptions tab (in yellow-orange).

After that I type in keywords at the top right (where it says Filter by name, folder or URL).

All my subscriptions show up for that tag, like this:

On the first subscription, I click the Change folders… button and choose New Folder, title it tech keywords and click OK. The reason we do this is because the new tag must exist with at least one subscription in it before we move the others.

Now I see this for my first subscription:

Next to Select there is a link for All (in this case All 8 subscriptions since there are only 8). I click that to put a checkbox in all of them.

From the More Actions… drop-down menu I do two things:

1. Under Add to folder I choose tech keywords.
2. Under Remove from folder I choose keywords.

I click Back to Google Reader, and…

Success! I’ve "moved" all subscriptions from keywords to tech keywords.

The only thing left now is cleanup.

I click Settings, then the Folders and Tags tab, then delete the keywords tag as I’m not using it any longer.

And that’s it. Done deal.

I am a fairly heavy user of Craigslist as are many of you out there. And most of you have the same complaint I do about the service, that being it can be a little difficult to get around and there’s more or less no way to search multiple areas at the same time.

Well, now you can. CraigsList Reader is a free app that makes it a whole lot easier to find stuff on CL. And you can search any number of combinations of different regions and categories.

However the software is not without its flaws. I’ll say up front it is a great app and you will like it if you use CL at all, but here’s my complaint list:

Location update takes forever

When you first start using the app you’ll want to update all the locations from the CL system. This can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes, and I’m not kidding. Fortunately once it’s done you most likely won’t have to do it again.

Somewhat difficult to cancel a search

When a search is executed and you cancel it, the software "hesitates" a bit before canceling. And sometimes search results continue to show up even though you instructed it to cancel.

Using IE engine to display listings

The HTML engine the software uses is IE and not its own. Not really a big deal but I can’t stand the way IE renders web pages.

Interface somewhat confusing

The top left where the search options are "one for all" style. Would be nice if this was laid out in layered menus instead particular to category.

Here’s what the app looks like in action:

Even with my complaints I do sincerely like where this app is going. I really dig the fact you can search multiple states/locations at once. I like you can sort listings by date, category, name, price and so on. There’s a whole lot to like about this app.

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE DOWNLOADING: This app does use the Microsoft .NET framework. Most of you already have this installed so you shouldn’t have to worry about it.

Link: CraigsList Reader.

Did you try this app? What did you think? Let us know by writing a comment.