EXP Systems Forum: Surpasses expectations!

Message

   Comments

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This is a **great** program. I have used other pdf generators for quite some time only out of sheer ignorance! Within 60 seconds--literally!--of first use, I knew that this program was a winner. pdf reDirect provides a much more elegant (simpler, cleaner, easier to use) interface and produces smaller PDFs with no discernable quality difference! If you only had delete-page and reorder-page capabilities (see wish list items below) I would rate you "perfect" for the vast majority of computer users. Yes, pdf995 has more features, but I have never needed them. Furthermore, the free version of pdf995 is quite annoying, with its banner followed by forced opening of IE. Cutepdf is less annoying than pdf995, but it makes larger files. I did a completely anecdotal test of pdf reDirect with 3 random pages, and all of them came out smaller than pdf995. I am somewhat passionate about usability (I am a software engineer with many years experience) and I can find no faults with pdfRedirect. (If you want to see some interesting examples of poor usability, I have a small gallery on my open source website cleancode.sourceforge.net.) My other passion is useful support: from reading your forum, you are remarkable, particularly with your handling of the alleged embedded keylogger (which turned out to be a false positive).

Wish List

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Ability to delete one or more pages from a pdf file.

Ability to reorder pages in a pdf file. (Your program allows reordering of page chunks up until one saves the file and removes the chunks; at that point the file becomes immutable).

Ability to select multiple items in merge list to do group delete or group up/down.

Bug List

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When you press and hold Alt-Tab, the icon for PDF is a plain parallelogram, different from your normal program logo.

Window Size Problem with 1024x768 screen:

My laptop uses 1024 x 768 screen size. When I open pdf reDirect, the window is roughly square at 800 x 800 -- that is it is just slightly taller than my screen height. And though I will get a resize arrow if I hover over an edge, the reDirect window does not budge--it is not resizable. Browsing through your forum, however, I found a workaround. Shift-minimize to get to the tiny window, then maximize, which maximizes to about 800w x 600h and now it fits on my screen!

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Thank you for such a fine product!

Author	Message
msorens Newbie Joined: 12 Mar 06 Posts: 10	Topic: Surpasses expectations! Posted: 12 Mar 06 at 10:15AM
	Comments ========== This is a great program. I have used other pdf generators for quite some time only out of sheer ignorance! Within 60 seconds--literally!--of first use, I knew that this program was a winner. pdf reDirect provides a much more elegant (simpler, cleaner, easier to use) interface and produces smaller PDFs with no discernable quality difference! If you only had delete-page and reorder-page capabilities (see wish list items below) I would rate you "perfect" for the vast majority of computer users. Yes, pdf995 has more features, but I have never needed them. Furthermore, the free version of pdf995 is quite annoying, with its banner followed by forced opening of IE. Cutepdf is less annoying than pdf995, but it makes larger files. I did a completely anecdotal test of pdf reDirect with 3 random pages, and all of them came out smaller than pdf995. I am somewhat passionate about usability (I am a software engineer with many years experience) and I can find no faults with pdfRedirect. (If you want to see some interesting examples of poor usability, I have a small gallery on my open source website cleancode.sourceforge.net.) My other passion is useful support: from reading your forum, you are remarkable, particularly with your handling of the alleged embedded keylogger (which turned out to be a false positive). Wish List ========== Ability to delete one or more pages from a pdf file. Ability to reorder pages in a pdf file. (Your program allows reordering of page chunks up until one saves the file and removes the chunks; at that point the file becomes immutable). Ability to select multiple items in merge list to do group delete or group up/down. Bug List ========== When you press and hold Alt-Tab, the icon for PDF is a plain parallelogram, different from your normal program logo. Window Size Problem with 1024x768 screen: My laptop uses 1024 x 768 screen size. When I open pdf reDirect, the window is roughly square at 800 x 800 -- that is it is just slightly taller than my screen height. And though I will get a resize arrow if I hover over an edge, the reDirect window does not budge--it is not resizable. Browsing through your forum, however, I found a workaround. Shift-minimize to get to the tiny window, then maximize, which maximizes to about 800w x 600h and now it fits on my screen! ========== Thank you for such a fine product!
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Michel_K17 Moderator Group Forum Administrator Joined: 25 Jan 03 Posts: 1673	Posted: 12 Mar 06 at 11:10AM
	Hi, Wow...I'm blushing! I'll try not to let it go to my head. I did agonize over the UI and optimizing the PDF output: I am glad that you noticed. I have some good news for most of the shortcomings/requests that you have, so here they are: Wish List - Ability to Delete pages from a PDF. Can be done with PDF reDirect Pro by extracting the pages out of the PDF, and re-combining them via the Merge List. Not ideal, but it works. In the future (this fall) I will add a tree view so that you can see the pages within a PDF, and be able to re-order them. Wish List - Ability to reorder pages. Same story: PDF reDirect Pro: extract pages and re-combine them in any order. Wish List - Group Delete/Move. It's on my "todo" list. Bug - Ugly Icon. I had not noticed. Thanks for letting me know: I have added that to my "todo" list. I have two 21" Trinitron Monitors (used, $100 ea) so real estate is not a problem, and rarely use teh ALT+TAB combination. Bug - Window does not resize. This was fixed at v2.1.7. Resizing worked fine only ifs you had the "do not show window content while resizing" option selected. My bad, but it is fixed now. Simply go into the Preferences and click the "check Web for Updates" button and follow the instructions. Keep in mind that even though I referred to PDF reDirect Pro for the page order, I migrate 1 or 2 features from the Pro version to the Free version once a year at each major release. You should get the page re-ordering in the Free version at the next major release (~6-9 months from now - early winter). Thanks again! Michel Edited by Michel_K17
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CharlesF Newbie Joined: 05 Jul 05 Posts: 18	Posted: 24 Mar 06 at 5:22PM
	I have to agree with your comments on the quality of PDF Redirect (Std and Pro), and Michel's responsiveness to problems. I am in the process of tearing out Jaws PDF (commercial product) at one of my major cusotmers and replacing it with the Pro version of PDF ReDirect. I'm looking forward to Michel fixing my last remaining problem <grin> Regards, Charles
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