Need a tabbed PDF viewer

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Level 1

59 points

Need a tabbed PDF viewer

Does anyone know where I can find a tabbed PDF viewer for OSX?

Preview is nice but I prefer to have a single window as I add documents.

Preview can put multiple PDFs in one window, but its clumsy at best, with selection of each document sharing search results and other features. Its also fairly slow.

I was using Foxit Reader in Windows and found it pretty well does exactly what I want, so I'd be interested in if anyone knows of an OSX alternative of that, or at least something similar.

As my use of PDFs gets higher for various tasks, everything from programming to managing game documentation (RPGs with a lot of source and my own writing) Preview is just not doing the job.

Ideally a tabbed reader would still have annotation features at least, though even just having a tabbed interface would be a huge plus.

Web browsers have it, kinda suprirsed its not an automatic feature of PDF viewers.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Sep 28, 2011 7:44 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 28, 2011 7:54 AM in response to cshapple

have you tried the real thing, Adobe Reader?

it doesnt use a tabbed structure but a two pane window to show pages attachments or markup

free down load from:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?platform=macintosh&product=10

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Answer 2

cshapple Author

Level 1

59 points

Sep 28, 2011 8:14 AM in response to Gary Scotland

Thanks but Adobe Reader is horrible, or it has been. Its even slower than Preview. Adobe Reader is usually the first thing I toss and replace with Foxit on Windows machines. I might give it a try though for this one task I have.

The reason for wanting a tabbed window for this is about the same as for using a tabbed browser: its nice when you want to refer to multiple documents while also having other windows on screen.

Its nice because then you can switch between multiple documents and either gain screen room by not having a sidebar, or the sidebar can server for another function, again saving space overall.

I can fullscreen the viewer and put applications on top which is often OK, but since they broke this behavior in Lion I would like to eventually find a tabbed solution.

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Answer 3

X423424X

Level 6

14,271 points

Sep 28, 2011 10:24 AM in response to cshapple

I just saw an update for an app called Dioretsa today on MacUpdate.com which advertises itself as a pdf viewer with tabs. I don't know any other details about it though.

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Answer 4

cshapple Author

Level 1

59 points

Sep 28, 2011 11:47 AM in response to X423424X

X423424X wrote:

I just saw an update for an app called Dioretsa today on MacUpdate.com which advertises itself as a pdf viewer with tabs. I don't know any other details about it though.

Hey, thank you. They don't offer a demo, one of things that ***** about App Store, but I'm going to try and find a review and might give it a try.

Appreciate the link and I'll try to remember to update this after I try it.

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Answer 5

cshapple Author

Level 1

59 points

Sep 28, 2011 2:36 PM in response to X423424X

Tried Dioretsa. Very slow, buggy, and just doesn't work well at all.

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Answer 6

X423424X

Level 6

14,271 points

Sep 28, 2011 6:09 PM in response to cshapple

Oh well, thanks for the feedback 😀

I don't know if what I am about to suggest is acceptable to you or not but I mention it anyway...

Since browsers have tab capability, you could drag the pdf file into a tab in your browser and view it from there. I just tried this with a pdf file in Chrome and Safari. Firefox probaby can do this too (and it did for a one-page pdf) but it opened Preview for a multi-page pdf (I might have set a preference to do that but didn't check for this reply).

Update:

Another possible tabbed pdf reader? iannotate

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Answer 7

cshapple Author

Level 1

59 points

Sep 29, 2011 4:51 PM in response to X423424X

X423424X wrote:

Oh well, thanks for the feedback 😀

I don't know if what I am about to suggest is acceptable to you or not but I mention it anyway...

Since browsers have tab capability, you could drag the pdf file into a tab in your browser and view it from there. I just tried this with a pdf file in Chrome and Safari. Firefox probaby can do this too (and it did for a one-page pdf) but it opened Preview for a multi-page pdf (I might have set a preference to do that but didn't check for this reply).

Update:

Another possible tabbed pdf reader? iannotate

Ha, yea... I've actually done that before.

Right now I'm just stacking Preview and using the window menu, but Preview has other issues even beyond tabs. Every time I save a PDF in Preview that I have annotated, it corrupts the text. It looks right when displayed, but when I cut and paste the results are garbage.

iAnnotate: its on the App Store, no way to test it first that I can see. Not gonna pay $10 just to see if it works 😟

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