4 ms·

On OS X, there's possibly the best PDF viewer ever, in Preview. I'm curious why you'd want so strongly to avoid using it?

m_eiman 15y ago
I prefer opening a PDF in a tab until I've had a chance to see if it's something I want to keep. With download-and-open-in-Preview I'm filling up my Downloaded Files folder with a lot of PDFs that I don't want to keep, and I'll have to delete them manually.
- cemerick 15y ago
  Indeed, I'm surprised this had to be said.
  - timtadh 15y ago
    As a linux user I am surprised. When I download to open in my reader the pdfs go into /tmp. This is fine, because since /tmp is a ramfs it just goes away when I turn off my computer. If I want it I just save it to a permanent location.
    - randallsquared 15y ago
      Unlike m_eiman and cemerick, I regard dumping debris into my Downloads folder as a feature. I basically never clean it out; it's just a convenience place to keep stuff that I have a low probability of ever wanting again, auto-sorted by how likely I am to want it (most recent first, in other words). Since I almost never bother with more than the first few items in the stack display of Downloads, it didn't occur to me that cleaning it out might be a chore, or even desirable.
      - m_eiman 15y ago
        It's desirable when you're using a laptop with a 120GB SSD that for some reason fills up all the time :/
  - edu 15y ago
    This is the way (download, open in preview, keep/delete) I prefer. It's just a matter of taste.
jaysonelliot 15y ago
Whatever engine Apple is using to view PDFs in Preview, it doesn't always display PDFs correctly. It's much faster than the bloated beast that is Acrobat, but I'd say about 20% of the documents I open in Preview have to be viewed in Acrobat to be usable, so I've just defaulted to avoiding Preview instead. A good, fast PDF viewer in the browser would be far better than either of those options.
- gmac 15y ago
  What kinds of PDFs are you opening? I find the failure rate in Preview is more like 0.5%, and it's generally related to annoying (Adobe proprietary?) form-related stuff. Plus Preview can also do some very handy basic editing (cropping, adding/deleting/reordering pages, etc.), which I can only assume Adobe have left out to in order to up-sell you Acrobat.

m_eiman 15y ago

I prefer opening a PDF in a tab until I've had a chance to see if it's something I want to keep. With download-and-open-in-Preview I'm filling up my Downloaded Files folder with a lot of PDFs that I don't want to keep, and I'll have to delete them manually.

cemerick 15y ago
Indeed, I'm surprised this had to be said.
- timtadh 15y ago
  As a linux user I am surprised. When I download to open in my reader the pdfs go into /tmp. This is fine, because since /tmp is a ramfs it just goes away when I turn off my computer. If I want it I just save it to a permanent location.
  - randallsquared 15y ago
    Unlike m_eiman and cemerick, I regard dumping debris into my Downloads folder as a feature. I basically never clean it out; it's just a convenience place to keep stuff that I have a low probability of ever wanting again, auto-sorted by how likely I am to want it (most recent first, in other words). Since I almost never bother with more than the first few items in the stack display of Downloads, it didn't occur to me that cleaning it out might be a chore, or even desirable.
    - m_eiman 15y ago
      It's desirable when you're using a laptop with a 120GB SSD that for some reason fills up all the time :/
- edu 15y ago
  This is the way (download, open in preview, keep/delete) I prefer. It's just a matter of taste.

jaysonelliot 15y ago

Whatever engine Apple is using to view PDFs in Preview, it doesn't always display PDFs correctly. It's much faster than the bloated beast that is Acrobat, but I'd say about 20% of the documents I open in Preview have to be viewed in Acrobat to be usable, so I've just defaulted to avoiding Preview instead. A good, fast PDF viewer in the browser would be far better than either of those options.

gmac 15y ago
What kinds of PDFs are you opening? I find the failure rate in Preview is more like 0.5%, and it's generally related to annoying (Adobe proprietary?) form-related stuff. Plus Preview can also do some very handy basic editing (cropping, adding/deleting/reordering pages, etc.), which I can only assume Adobe have left out to in order to up-sell you Acrobat.