New Features

• Print from right-click context menu in Windows Explorer. When Nitro is your default PDF viewer, clicking Print in the right-click context menu will open the PDF and automatically send it to your printer.

• doc.spawnPagesFromTemplate JavaScript function at runtime. This JavaScript function is used to add new pages to the active PDF document (based on a hidden template created at time of form design).

• Keyboard input language detection. Text insertion tools (Type Text, Form Fields, etc.) will automatically load a font based on the user’s preferred input language set on the operating system. E.g. Japanese characters will be automatically available when using text insertion tools if Japanese is set as the default input language.

• Disable line width when rendering path objects. Enabling this preference (from the Page View preferences section) will ensure line widths are ignored when path objects are rendered. This is useful when working with very complex and line-heavy architectural or engineering documents.

• Rich text annotation / form field support. Annotations or form fields using rich text (bold, italics) will be rendered accordingly.

Updates

• Keyboard shortcuts are no longer overwritten.  Improved storage management of shortcuts preserves custom settings across application sessions.

• JPEG2000 image rendering.  Color rendering accuracy for some JPEG2000 encoded images has been greatly improved.

• Many bug fixes and improvements.  Many improvements in PDF rendering, printing and general application quality have been included in this version.

If you already have Nitro Reader, the update will be available through the application later this week.  If you want it immediately though, you can download it  here.

We contracted TNS, a global, independent market research firm to go out and quiz 1,000 adult Americans on our behalf, in a survey all about PDF files, digital documents, and paperless practices.

Needless to say, the results were shocking — both in the conventional (literal) context as well as in the “passing out from the sheer quantity of data sense.”

So, we brought in the awesomely talented guys at Column Five to distill all that data into one easily digested and conveniently shared infographic. Major props. It’s the first of a series we’re working on with them, and we’re pretty stoked with how it came out  – watch this space…

Click on the image below to view it in all its glory. After some bedtime reading? Click here to download your very own hi-resolution PDF.

Survey Methodology (AKA, required legal stuff)

This survey was conducted online, within the United States by TNS via its Express Online omnibus product on behalf of Nitro. The survey took place from September 29-October 2, 2011, among 1,000 adults ages 18 and older, using individual methodology. 

Portable Document Format (PDF) has been an ISO Open Standard since 2008, with an ever-increasing availability of alternative applications—many of which don’t allow their users to make the most of their PDF files.  With annoying updates, deliberately restricted functionality, in-application advertising, bundled third party toolbars, and so much more, free PDF readers seem all but freeing.

The Pledge

Here at Nitro, we’ve had enough.  For the month of February, we’re running a Facebook sweepstakes contest to spread the word and help our users declare their PDF independence.  All you need to do is join the cause and you’ll be eligible to win a brand new Sony Vaio E Series Laptop valued at $806.99!

The Keyboard: Your new best friend

Take a (Keyboard) Shortcut

Regular users of any application tend to rely on a handful of keyboard shortcuts, and most of us are familiar with at least a couple. They’re are a great way to shave time off the tasks you perform most frequently—sidestepping the mouse, menu, and anything else that gets in the way.

Today, we’re listing five of our favorite keyboard shortcuts in Nitro Pro 7 and Nitro Reader 2 for those of you with nimble fingers that never leave the keyboard…

1.  Quick-launch Nitro 

Bypass the Start Menu or Desktop and launch Nitro Pro or Nitro Reader in nanoseconds using the Windows ‘Run’ command prompt.

1. Win+R to launch the ‘Run’ dialog
2. Type nitropdf (Nitro Pro) or nitropdfreader (Nitro Reader)
3. Hit Enter

2. Close Active Tab (Document)

Finished up with that PDF file? Close a single open tab without even looking at your mouse by hitting Ctrl+W

3. Enter Fullscreen View

Need to maximize your onscreen real estate and kill the clutter? Launch Fullscreen View with a single key: F11

4. Print Document

Sure, they’re digital documents—but most of us still make occasional use of the printer. Turn PDF to paper with Ctrl+P

5. View Document Properties

Want to know more about that PDF file, like where it came from? Check the author, initial view settings, security permissions, embedded fonts, and more. Just hit Ctrl+D

2012 is here and we’re looking to hire 14 new Nitronauts across the business.  We’re on the lookout for rockstar engineers, top gun account executives, creative geniuses, and just about everything in between.  Got your head in the cloud all day?  You might be a fit for our Senior SaaS Engineer .  Brand enforcer with a keen eye for design?  We need a Creative Director to make us look good.

Check these (and more!) out and get your application in here!

Want to make sure that we get your resume the way you want it to be seen?  Then, submit it as a PDF file.  Aside from the obvious fact (it probably makes sense to submit a PDF-based resume to a PDF software company), there are some real-world benefits worth paying attention to, regardless of where you’re applying.

When sending your resume as a PDF file instead of a typical Word document, it will look the same on every machine, every time—and anyone can open it.  Plus, you can preserve your hyperlinks for your email address, Linkedin, and personal website.  You might want to leave that video showcasing your breakdancing skills out though (unless it’s really, really good).

You can read all about it here.

On behalf of the millions of Nitro Reader users who’ve had digital signatures since 2010, we’d like to say congrats, guys! We love seeing a good idea get picked up.

However, once you’ve created a PDF file, it can still be a strain on your hard drive or a headache to email if it’s too large.  Here are some handy tips from our blog archives to reduce the size of your PDF file and hopefully reduce the number of headaches you have in 2012!

1. re-create the pdf to reduce pdf file size

A handy trick for reducing PDF file size is to re-create or ‘re-fry’ your PDF. By creating the PDF again you can strip out plenty of unwanted objects, remove tags, and compress images further. You can do this with any tool that supports ‘print to PDF’ functionality. For this trick you can use our free Nitro Reader.

-Open the PDF file

-Click Fileà Print

-Select Nitro PDF Creator 2 from the list of printers

-Click the Properties button and select Web-ready Conversion Quality

-Click OK.

2. reduce pdf file size with ‘save as’

If you use a PDF editor like Nitro Pro you can make use of the ‘Save As’ functionality to trim some fat off your PDF files. Chris Dahl, our VP of Desktop explained it succinctly:

PDF files have something that is called incremental updates, where any changes that you make to a document is appended to the end of the file without doing a complete rewrite. This is why the Save feature is much faster than a Save As, and also why PDF files saved this way can be large. The Save As feature will rewrite the entire file and provide you with a smaller file size.

So, to shrink the PDF, do the following:

-Open the PDF in Nitro Pro

-Click File à  Save As.

3. remove unwanted objects

PDF files can contain a bunch of different objects, including bookmarks, links, annotations, form fields, JavaScript, Named Destinations and embedded fonts — all of which can be removed from an existing PDF file. Like tip two it requires a PDF editing tool such as Nitro Pro.

-Open the PDF in Nitro Pro

-Click File > Optimize PDF > Select the Remove Objects tab.

-Choose the objects to remove

-Click Optimize

4. shrink all images in pdf files

For PDF files that contain many images, downsampling all of them can make a noticeable difference.

-Open the PDF in Nitro Pro

-Click File > Optimize PDF

-Pick from one of the 5 preset image quality options or select Custom for further compression choices

-Click OK, then Optimize

The last thing you want is to put in the effort to make a large PDF document only to find out it’s too large to send to anyone. Luckily, you can save time and headaches with these simple, easy-to-use tips as well as working more efficiently with Nitro.  You can download a free 14-day trial of Nitro Pro here: www.nitropdf.com/try/.

Nitro offers an industry-leading OCR solution in Nitro Pro 7 with a partnership from I.R.I.S.  I.R.I.S. is one of the foremost companies in OCR technology that allows written text to be converted and recognized electronically.  Want to search for that typo in your 100 page brief?  You just found the section in the legal reporter that corresponds directly to your case but don’t want to scan and send the whole manuscript?  Or you simply want to email certain parts of your handwritten notes to a coworker?  Nitro Pro 7 allows you to not only use OCR quickly and easily but you can also highlight, add sticky notes, and insert text directly into your PDF document.

Although it is certainly a big step, the ability to reference court filings in text searchable formats like PDF with OCR will not only reduce the cost of buying paper, ink, and courier services but will minimize the headache of maintaining the massive file rooms for clerks and paralegals.  Nitro Pro 7 is available with OCR automatically included for a free 14-day trial here: www.nitropdf.com/try/.

So the obvious solution would be to resort to emailing your documents, right?  But, how can anyone guarantee that the document they sent appears exactly how it was meant to look?  With varying email hosts and Word applications, the formatting can’t always be accurate…unless you use PDF!  The universal nature of the Portable Document Format (PDF) allows your file to appear as an electronic substitute for paper.  With the added features of Nitro Reader, you can also edit a document fully with collaboration features like sticky notes, highlight, cross-out, and underline text as well as in-text paragraph substitution seamlessly within your documents.

If you create a PDF in Nitro and send it to someone else, it will show up exactly how it’s intended.  And since the recipient can only view the PDF in its original form, you also control what they are able to edit and view.  The ease of Nitro’s plugins for Microsoft Office also make PDF creation, collaboration and emailing simple and efficient while saving paper at the same time!

Nitro Reader cuts shipping costs as well as software costs by being 100% free.  You can create, edit, collaborate, sign, send, and secure PDF files quickly while maintaining a small download footprint on your hard drive.  Plus, by reducing paper consumption in your office, you not only cut the cost and hassle of mailing letters and buying stamps completely but do your part to save the planet at the same time.  And you don’t have to endure riding a horse for over almost 2 weeks just to wish someone a happy birthday!  You can download Nitro Reader for free at www.nitroreader.com.

But what about a document where you’ve got tens (or hundreds) of instances of text you want to redact – like the name, address, or sale price in a real estate contract? Finding and redacting every single occurrence is time-consuming, not to mention risky.

That’s where Search & Redact comes in, allowing you to identify multiple instances automatically, then easily go through each and apply the redactions individually, or all in one go.

In this example, we’ll look at hypothetical company balance sheet. Imagine, if you will, that it wasn’t actually hypothetical (trust us, it is!) and we wanted to remove every instance of the company’s name that appears in order to use it in these screenshots.

1. Go to the Protect ribbon and look for Redaction.
2. Select Search and Redact.
3. Enter the text you want to redact (in this case, “XYZ COMPANY LIMITED”) in the search field.
4. The search results will display total number of occurrences first.
   1. Click to expand and show each individual instance.
5. Click on the individual instances to see them as they appear in the document, and select the check-box to mark them for redaction.
   1. Or, select the check-box at the top to mark all instances for redaction.
6. Click Redact All Marks to apply redactions to every selected occurrence of the phrase you searched for.

In the image below, you can see that the company name at the top of each page in the Pages panel has been redacted, indicated by the black mark – it’s that easy!

Nitro Pro 7’s Redaction tools allow you to share documents that contain sensitive information, easily and securely – regardless of where they end up after you send them.

If you’re already using Nitro Pro 7, why not try some of the more advanced Redaction tools today?

If you’re using an older version, or one of our free products, download the free, fully functional trial and find out for yourself just how easy it is.