Since 1993, Adobe has dominated the market with Acrobat and PDF products, which is understandable since it controls the PDF specification. During this time, ARTS PDF has built up significant experience with Acrobat, its plug-ins and the Portable Document Format.

In 2001, ARTS PDF extended its solutions' reach by broadening into the Server PDF market. ARTS PDF's expertise in PDF and software development in general has put it at the forefront of PDF technology.

This experience puts ARTS PDF in an excellent position to release a product like Nitro PDF, combining its PDF expertise with Acrobat and plug-in know-how.

What's in the Box?

Nitro PDF Direct

This tool is a standalone application that provides a quick way to convert source files of various types into single or multiple PDF files. You can select files and either drag them in or simply right mouse click in Explorer to convert to PDF.

Nitro PDF Direct comes in handy when you need to edit PDF files or build composite PDF documents from different file formats (like Word, Excel, PowerPoint), it saves a lot of time (and hassle) since you don't have to go into each application and then create a single PDF through the interface.

Nitro PDF

This program is the main subject of the review, and will be covered in detail below.

What do you get for your money?

A lot! Comparisons to Acrobat aside, Nitro PDF represents exceptional value for money. Nitro PDF for me is really the first serious tool in the marketplace for creation, management and editing of PDF documents.

So let's have a look at the top features:

• Office Integration
• System Level PDF Driver
• Speed
• Form Fields
• JavaScript
• Comments
• Stamps
• Searching

Office Integration

Like most people, I use Microsoft Office every day, so it was quite a surprise to see that Nitro PDF was integrated into the applications (Word, Excel). Just like the familiar Acrobat icons on the toolbar, Nitro PDF installs itself as an 'Add-In' to Word and Excel, providing one-click printing to PDF.

Using a variety of files (one over 1000 pages with lots of graphics), I had absolutely no problems with the conversion to PDF using Nitro PDF toolbar buttons. Along with conversion to PDF, the Nitro PDF Printer Driver also converts document information and provides a way to set up the PDF for viewing.

Technology that just works makes us more productive and Nitro PDF just works.

System Level PDF Driver

The PDF printer driver behaves exactly like a normal printer driver -- with a few extras.

When printing to PDF you can output the PDF in any of three different PDF versions: 1.3,1.4 or 1.5. You also have plenty of control over the paper size, compression options and also how fonts are embedded into the PDF.

Additionally, there are settings for where the PDF is created, incremental naming conventions and what action to take if the PDF file already exists.

Another feature available is the ability to add Watermarks. Putting this feature at this level is a great idea as you can apply the same watermark to documents created from all of your applications.

Security can also be applied in the PDF printer driver settings dialog.

Speed

It's fast. Really fast. Not only is Nitro PDF fast to create PDF documents, it's really quick to start up.

My testing is by no means exhaustive, but printing a 52 page spreadsheet took me almost 4 seconds using Nitro PDF (compared to 31 seconds in Acrobat).

Of course, being a first series you should expect it to be fast; time will tell if this speed advantage can be maintained when additional features and tools built into the application.

Form Fields

Building forms using PDF makes a lot of sense, as they can be made to look exactly like the original paper version and provide the ability to save the captured data.

Creating Forms in Nitro PDF is straightforward -- there's support for Buttons, Check Boxes, Radio Buttons, Combo and List Boxes, Text Boxes and even Digital Signatures.

It took me a little while to really get a handle on how to set the properties for a form field. The unusual properties tree was somewhat off-putting initially, as it's not quite as intuitive as Acrobat's. That said, being able to see all of the possible form field properties in one glance is useful.

JavaScript

You can add JavaScript to pretty much any object in Nitro PDF (with some exceptions).

I miss the OK button ;). This might sound funny, but when I was entering some simple JavaScript into the 'Set Document Actions' dialog there was no OK button to click to tell Nitro that I was done and to "Please put it somewhere for safe keeping". I actually clicked away and then clicked back on the item just to check that it had remembered (it had).

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any documentation on the type of things that can be done with JavaScript in Nitro PDF. From my experience with JavaScript in Acrobat I was able to accomplish quite a lot -- but that's because I've been doing it for a while, so I'm pretty sure newbies would struggle.

Comments

I personally think that Comments are one of those understated but extremely useful features. I also think that they should be easy to create, edit and remove. Nitro has executed on all three of these by making them very unobtrusive and easy to edit or remove.

Stamps

Applying stamps should be a feature that's not only easy to do, but inherently flexible. Stamping inside Nitro PDF is both of these.

When using the standard stamps in the Stamp Closet (cool name), the stamps were easily customized and 'stamped' onto the PDF. However when I created my own stamps I noticed Nitro PDF slowed down slightly when applying my custom stamp, but quickly sped up once it finished.

You can also bring in (import) stamps from other file types (not just PDF) to quickly build up your PDF stamp collection.

Searching

As with most people, I have thousands of PDF's (it's actually more like hundreds of thousands), so searching is a big deal for me (and a lot of others too). At first I didn't think an indexing tool existed inside Nitro PDF -- but it does! It's a little hidden, but if you choose Search from the Edit menu and then click on the third icon underneath the Search text box (it looks like a page with a magnifying glass over it) it reveals the Search Index dialog box. Here, you can either create a new index, search an existing index or manipulate a previously built index.

Although the index files are not compatible with Acrobat, they behave in the same fashion. Firstly, you create an index of PDF files (by selecting folders of PDFs). Then, you perform the search against the index instead of searching a file.

I did a test on a folder with over 1400 PDFs (some with 4000+ pages) to see how Nitro would cope, and more importantly to see how long it would take (one of my bugbears with Acrobat is the time it takes to build a search index). I was really impressed with its speed; the index was created in under twenty minutes.

I did however have several false starts and a crash when trying to build an index. However, after selectively choosing folders, I found a PDF that was actually corrupted and prevented the indexing from taking place; once this file was excluded from the index, the build was successful.

Another thing that puzzled me for about five minutes was how to actually use the index. The process is straightforward once you work it out, but with most things it's the working it out part that's hard. So you choose the 'Search Index' icon (third icon), then choose browse for the .zpi file, then once it's displayed you put a tick in the box and click the OK button. I had just been putting a tick in the box and then trying to do the search, as I didn't see the OK button until the last minute.

It might come as no surprise, but it was quick: searching for a generic word found over 2000 hits instantly, and the list just kept filling up. When I selected an item, there was no delay in displaying the selected results (and highlighting).

What's not to like?

The installation process didn't ask me if I wanted to set my default viewer to Nitro PDF, which, although not critical is a nice feature for users who already have Acrobat and want to experience Nitro PDF out of the box.

Non-Standard Interface. Some of the user interface widgets/controls just don't make sense and often confuse me. The initial confusion were the buttons, which are simply text with a colored square on its left. I do however like the fact that the buttons on the Toolbars are small in size.

Double clicking a Stamp creates a Comment. This interaction is present in many features of Nitro PDF instead of showing the object's properties -- still can't quite work this one out, I would have preferred the properties for the object to show up.

Dual Monitor Support. To be fair, Acrobat doesn't have this either, in fact, most mainstream apps don't have support for more than one monitor. Reading a PDF or two on dual screens would be a great feature.

So what's to like?

It's extensible. We can expect to see plug-ins, tool libraries and other enhancements in the near future -- and if we're lucky, perhaps some of the excellent ARTS PDF plug-ins for Acrobat might be ported.

Speed. I just love the fact this thing opens up in seconds; any tool that performs its job quickly and correctly is my kind of tool.

Buy Online and be up and running in 30 minutes. In the scheme of things it's not a big file to download (of course if you're on dial-up you'll disagree). My experience was that after buying it through PDF Store and downloading the 20-megabyte installer, I was creating PDFs with Nitro PDF in 30 minutes.

Compatibility. If your friends or colleagues are still using Acrobat, then you can rest assured that the files you create in Nitro PDF will open flawlessly in Acrobat (I did lots of testing to assure myself). However, some of the more advanced features from Acrobat 7 will not work in Nitro PDF, this is because Nitro PDF supports up to PDF version 1.5 (Acrobat 6) whereas Acrobat supports PDF up to version 1.6 (Acrobat 7). 90% of the files I tested (and created from Acrobat 7) opened without any problems at all in Nitro PDF.

Copy/Paste directly into a PDF. Wow! This feature is awesome, you grab some text from somewhere, point to a spot in the PDF and wham you can paste it right in there!!! Then you can ungroup the pasted text and change its font, color, size etc.

Who does it appeal to?

Because this is a product for the office PDF user, it won't appeal to high-end publishing professionals interested in fancy color separation or to advanced programmers. It will however cater very nicely to Microsoft Office users, desktop publishers or document management professionals and due to its low price the average home user can now afford a quality PDF creation and editing tool. The pricing could also attract CIOs and corporate buyers looking to get PDF creation and editing to workgroups, offices and whole organizations.

Summary

I really like this product, it's quick to create PDFs, fast to use and overall, its price point is just so attractive that I didn't mind putting my hand in my pocket to pay for it.

ARTS PDF has a real winner on its hands here. The team has proven that they are not only PDF experts but that they provide quality software solutions that are always well supported and updated. I can't wait to see what comes next.