May 15, 2011

Windows 8 to kill off Adobe Reader?

So long, farewell to Acrobat
Windows 8 is set to include its own native PDF reader, signalling the end of forced Adobe Reader integration.





Best Microsoft MCTS Training – Microsoft MCITP Training at Certkingdom.com



A thousand weary PDF perusers are no doubt crying tears of happiness at the mere thought of never again having to update their PDF reader eighty-four times a day.

Hopefully the proprietary reader will also see an end to the almost-mandatory desktop shortcut that Adobe Reader drops on your desktop every time you update - but then again, this is Microsoft so we wouldn't bet on it.

Modernity

The new Microsoft PDF reader is known as 'Modern Reader', and uses the new AppX application package type, which is very similar to that of Windows Phone 7 and is likely to be used in Windows Phone 8 software too.

This should make emailing and opening PDF files on your phone and computer a much smoother experience, we'd hope, and could make developing cross-device applications much easier for devs.

The screenshots of the Modern Reader UI are pretty standard, featuring a very Windows Phone 7-esque look; it renders PDFs in full fidelity, offers zoom, allows for side-by-side page viewing and has a bookmark side-bar for skipping through chapters.
Bookmark and Share