Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bluebeam Revu prefered over Adobe Acrobat and PDF Annotator?

Bluebeam Revu site
Bluebeam Revu discount(from Student Tablet PC blog)
Bluebeam Revu review (from Got to Be mobile blog)

PDF Annotator (from my previous post)

(links fixed 10/24/07)

Last Friday I downloaded Bluebeam Revu which is a PDF creator, has a PDF print driver, and has great annotating and markup tools. I think this could kill off Adobe Acrobat Pro from my computer and has seriously pushed to the back my previous purchase of PDF Annotator. I really like how it works and the pen tools are quite good. At first I disliked the highlighter until I discovered you can toggle it between highlighting the text and just marking up with a highlighter. This software is designed for me and the way I work. It installs a toolbar in Microsoft Office, but I can not yet figure how to get it to be the default viewer in Internet Explorer. It atomatically installs in the "SEND TO" option of the right click options in explorer. You can right click on a word document, or any document, and choose to open in PDF ala Bluebeam Revu. I do not use AutoCAD, but it you do there is a premium version to support that program.

For now I think this will replace both Acrobat and PDF Annotator, but until I am sure, I will keep both of those on here as well. So far the only thing I really do not like is their ico file. Perhaps I am just way too used to seeing the Adobe Acrobat icon in my directory listings, but I suspect it has to do with my love of red and not that shade of blue. Try it and let me know what you think. Download here.

6 comments:

  1. I purchased Bluebeam PDF Revu standard edition for annotating PDF eBooks and manuals that are 1200+ pages and very inconvenient to print and highlight/underline/annotate. I have been using it for a couple of months on my Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC and it is working pretty good so far. I tried the cheaper PDF Annotator for a few days but it is not as good as Bluebeam PDF Revu (which of course costs more).

    -SJ

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  2. Yes, Bluebeam PDF Revu feels a lot more polished and stable than PDF Annotator. It also has much better antialiasing (in fact, it looks exactly like Adobe's antialiasing).

    Main drawback at this point is the lack of a real full-screen view. When I get the choice to read something in Word or PDF form, I'll always pick Word because I get a small-footprint UI and the option to zoom away the margins.

    Our Tablet PCs only have so much resolution -- every pixel counts. Bluebeam's Profiles aren't quite good enough because it's still wasting space up top and bottom.

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  3. I just got it and love it. Nice interface on my tablet. I use it for grading student essays. I modified the supplied proofreading symbols easily enough, after some excellent email help from Bluebeam. I really like the tool box.

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  4. I have been using bluebeam with firefox instead of explorer and my pdf links open appropriately. It is also a more secure browser:
    http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html

    I contacted bluebeam and they said

    "...Thank you for contacting Bluebeam Software. Unfortunately, there are plug-ins to Adobe from Explorer and Revu is unable to open files directly from Explorer without saving them at this time.

    Please let me know if there is anything else I can assist you with.

    Best regards,
    Beth

    Beth Leitner | Industry Specialist
    Bluebeam Software, Inc.
    626-296-2146 | bleitner@bluebeam.com
    866-496-2140 Toll Free | 626-398-9210 Fax
    766 E. Colorado Blvd., Ste. 200
    Pasadena, CA 91101
    www.bluebeam.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. I work for a popular online reseller and when bluebeam came knocking at our door, I was pleased that for the first time there was a noteworthy contender to Adobe, at a lower price. The lack of a Full Screen View also mystified me but found that you can tweak it using the "Profiles" in the View drop down.

    It's good to see people's opinions because I can go back to the mfr and say "you know, some folks are not happy with this feature..etc" and hope or cross my fingers that they put it in Version 8 (version 7 is already out).

    Keep in mind Bluebeam is still a young company, it is truly you, the end users that help make changes come to light.

    ReplyDelete
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