[ale] switching to foxit for pdf viewing with or without adobe as backup

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

Hi JD,

My experience with evince on Ubuntu, which is what I believe loads when you start document viewer, is that it's abilities for viewing complex pdf's and controlling page layout and zoom and switching are far inferior to Adobe Reader.  At one point, I had Adobe Reader installed in Ubuntu because it just works better.  Although, now, I might reverse that.  The feature set of Foxit seems far more comparable to Adobe, while still being more secure, they say.  I haven't tried to install it on linux yet, so I don't know if there is a ppa.  Regarding flash, I find that indispensable.  There are tons of sites that won't work without it.  However, I only allow it to run on sites I trust using noscript, as you suggested.  My banking sites, as it turns out, are happy enough using javascript.  They don't have to have flash.  That ruby on rails video you posted in another thread is Youtube.  Gotta have flash for that.

Sincerely,

Ron


JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

>Why not use native PDF tools on Linux?
>* xournal for editing/markups (to embed the edits, save-as PDF)
>* evince if searching (xournal doesn't have search for some reason)
>
>Sorry, I'm just confused.  If it doesn't have a PPA or it isn't in the
>distro
>repository, I don't want it on my system.  Getting programs directly
>from a ZIP
>or tgz or even a DEB is soooooo 1980s.   Package manager have freed us
>from the
>droll work of software updates from 50 different places.
>
>Hopefully everyone knows to avoid all programs made by Adobe by this
>point too,
>though I will admit to using Flash in an extremely selective manner. It
>is not
>enabled anywhere by default.
>
>
>On 03/22/2013 10:01 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> (Ignore the fact that some program names are not capitalized.  I just
>didn't
>> want to mess with it.)
>> 
>> Because of all the security problems with Adobe reader, I decided to
>switch to
>> foxit for pdf viewing rather than adobe, but I wanted to keep adobe
>as a backup
>> for more complex pdf files.  This sounds easy, but it's not as easy
>as you might
>> think to get it working right.  Also, the foxit installer does not
>set up
>> everything correctly and securely in this case.  I thought I'd share
>my
>> experience in case anyone is wanting to do the same thing.  For my
>purposes, I
>> prefer not to view pdf's in the browser, but to have the reader pop
>up.  I have
>> the configuration set for this.
>> 
>> (Warning, for security reasons, if you do have Adobe Reader on your
>system, and
>> you intend to keep it, go into its preferences and turn off
>javascript before
>> doing the following procedures, since Adobe reader could start up by
>mistake. 
>> This post tells how to configure Foxit, not Adobe.  There are a
>number of other
>> settings to configure Adobe reader for safety which are not
>documented here.  I
>> can list those if anyone has a need for it.)
>> 
>> What I did here is on Windows, but almost everything applies to Linux
>too, but
>> some of the procedures would be different.  Some of the Linux gurus
>can tell how
>> to do those things that are different.
>> 
>> NOTE: YOU MUST DO ALL THESE PROCEDURES, OTHER THAN FOXIT
>INSTALLATION, ON EACH
>> USER LOGIN.
>> 
>> You can get the foxit reader here:
>> 
>> http://www.foxitsoftware.com/
>> 
>> Install it according to the normal procedures for your system.
>> 
>> You are NOT done, at this point.  You just think you are.
>> 
>> Start the foxit reader.
>> 
>> Go into the preferences screen and check / set the following tabs /
>settings:
>> 
>>      File Associations page:
>>           Click the make default PDF viewer button (just to double
>check), click OK
>>           CHECK always perform check when starting foxit reader
>>           UNCHECK (per your preference) display pdf in browser
>> 
>>      General page: (not security related, but are my preferences)
>>           UNCHECK make hand tool select text
>>           UNCHECK auto hide status bar
>>           UNCHECK show start page
>> 
>>      JavaScript page: (note this defaults to a LESS secure setting)
>>           UNCHECK enable javascript actions
>> 
>>      Trust Manager page: (this will default to what you set during
>install)
>>           CHECK enable safe reading mode
>> 
>>      Updater page: (these are my preferences)
>>           SELECT automatically install updates
>> 
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--

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Ron Frazier
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