Trying to navigate a PDF version of a map is a frustrating experience. Based on the recommendations of LifeHacker, I tried three PDF viewers:
- Adobe Acrobat : well supported, tons of features, too many features, bloated, slow, poor navigation, automatically launches auxiliary programs in the background.
- Tracker PDF-XChanger Viewer : free version is just spam for the Pro version. Bloated, horrible web site, poor documentation, poor support, poor navigation. There’s no way I would pay for a Pro version when the website looks like a spam front.
- Sumatra : crashed and wouldn’t render PDF.
I was just looking for a PDF viewer that had:
- instant pan (the hand tool) via mouse or spacebar. All the PDF viewers I tried had this. And also an
- instant zoom either through a keyboard shortcut or mousewheel support, none of these had that except Sumatra, which wouldn’t even render the PDF.
As far as usability, for this application, I’m going to stick with Adobe Acrobat. It’s navigation is better than PDF-XChanger, and I’ve already gotten used to all its annoyances.
[UPDATE] I found a setting in Adobe Acrobat in the General setting called “Make Hand tool use mouse-wheel zooming” that’s working out for me.