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Good Reader iPhone PDF viewer
September 15, 2009 | 2:54 pm
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By Chris Meadows
Over on the Tor.com blog, Bruce Baugh waxes enthusiastic about the “Good Reader” PDF viewer for the iPhone. Normally $4.99 but currently on sale for 99 cents, Good Reader loads PDF files one page at a time, so no matter how large and bloated the PDF file might be (and some role-playing games are really bad in that respect) it will not overload your memory.
I went ahead and downloaded the reader to check it out. I have to admit, it certainly does offer some nice features. It loads via Bonjour WiFi the same as Air Sharing and iSilo, but can also load via USB by using iPhone Explorer for Windows or a custom helper app for Mac to insert the file into the app’s backup on your hard drive and re-syncing, or via download from the web using a built-in browser or a http prefix extension from Safari.
For some reason, large files (such as the 160-megabyte Spycraft 2.0) seem to take a very long amount of time to upload to the device, but once they have loaded they can certainly be viewed. It does takes a while (especially on a relatively slow first-generation iPod Touch) to load each page—and to save on processing, the page is rendered in only as much detail as necessary to view at any given time. For instance, zooming in on part of the screen causes the characters to appear blurred for a few seconds until the app can re-render to that level of detail.
The controls for the app are a little complicated, and I had to consult the help feature a number of times before figuring them all out. Good Reader started with automatic orientation changes set to off, which caused me to assume the app did not support them—until I found that it was an option that could be turned on or off.
The app also features seven screen tap zones, with icons that are a little confusing until you know what they mean. Once you do, however, you start to appreciate the versatility of the scrolling options they provide.
Instead of simple up-down scrolling, or even up-down plus left-right, Good Reader allows the reader to scroll all the way right, then with a single tap in the same place jump back to the left side of the screen to continue on the next line. Tapping in the lower-right corner jumps back to left and scrolls down to the next page. This reading mode isn’t necessarily the best for pages with two or more columns, but for other applications it should work pretty well.
PDFs will never be my favorite thing to view on the iPod Touch, and this app isn’t likely to change that. But it is nice to know that I finally have the ability to view enormous, overbloated PDFs as well as smaller, more sensibly made ones. I highly recommend Good Reader for all your PDF-viewing needs. It will be a bargain at its normal price of $4.99—but it is an absolute steal at 99 cents!
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Comments:
Chris, do you know how this handles a PDF ebook with a large page size: such as 6″x9″ or even 8.5″x11″.
Are there specific requirements for the page size?
Thanks … MP
Well, Spycraft 2.0 (which I used as my example screenshot) is an 8.5″ x 11″ book. It seemed to handle it just fine.
It would be great if the Reader could be aware of column layout.
Then it could let you read a multi-column page as a single flow (scrolls down the first column, then jumps back to the top of the second one, and so on).
Perhaps you could leave feedback to that effect on the creator’s site.
I’ve had GoodReader for a couple of months now and think it is the best of the bunch. I do a newsletter for a needle arts guild which pages 8-1/2 x 11, 2 column and using the tapping features mentioned above, it displays beautifully. Also good with Excel, Word and text files. You can select background and font combos for different types of files. My text files are brown on beige, similar to the background I picked for reading Amazon Kindle books on the iPhone.
Note: if you’ve upgraded to iTunes 9, the iPhoneBrowser app will no longer function. One can transfer files via wifi, as long as one’s computer and iThingy are both connected to the same network. But one does *not* have the same degree of control over the app’s behavior, or, apparently, much ability to move things around.
I’m hoping for an upgrade, but I’m still happy with it because of the ‘tap-scrolling’ thing it does. I hated having to deal with the squirrelliness of ‘drag-scrolling’ my pdf’s so I could read them.
Asphault, actually there’s a new version of the iPhone Explorer app out that will work with it; check the website.
And also, it would seem I posted my review a day or two too soon, as I’ve found that Good Reader has just had a major upgrade, adding features like text reflowing, day and night themes, and so on. I’m going to have to try that out.