Skip to main content

2 Ways To Annotate Your PDF Files Online


If you use Ubuntu, you may have faced the frustration of trying to find a native way to annotate your PDF files, like say, any of the MakeUseOf PDF manuals you know you can download for free. Unless you run some Windows program via Wine, wait for Evince’s annotation features, or learn to use the incredibly user-unfriendly PDFEdit, you’re pretty much out of luck. That’s when you can be thankful that there are developers focused on making web-based PDF tools.
There are plenty of PDF tools, many that are document-viewing sites, such as Scribd, Issuu, DocStoc, etc. that beautifully display PDF files neatly on your browser, but not many of these let you do much other than admire the document.

Few web-based PDF tools actually offer annotation features, like the ones you can find in Foxit (whose Linux version doesn’t actually have annotation tools) or PDF-XChange, my favorite reader with customizable keyboard shortcuts. Perhaps, you occasionally use PDF files or maybe have a PDF reader without many or any annotating features, such as the lightweight SumatraPDF or Evince in Ubuntu.
Whatever reason you have for needing a quick way to annotate PDF files, check out the following web-based PDF tools.

PDFEscape – Great For Advanced Annotating & Light Page Manipulation

PDFEscape has been featured on our site as a great PDF editor and form filler with the basic features that most users welcome. You don’t need an account to edit a PDF and can load PDFs from your computer or from an URL. The number of PDF-annotation tools is pretty impressive as you can whiteout (hide parts of your PDF file), and insert links, insert arrows, images, sticky notes, checkmarks and even form fields of several types (text, checkbox, listbox, etc).
annotate pdf
That’s not where the features end though. PDFEscape helps you delete, rotate and move pages in your PDF file, which even in desktop PDF readers, you usually can find limited support for.
how to annotate pdf
You can also encrypt the document with a password, as well as edit the details of the PDF file, such as title, author, etc. You can even save your progress as you’re editing while you’re trying the features out (you don’t have to be logged in), unless you navigate elsewhere and lose your session. PDFEscape saves the annotation to the PDF file, as opposed to Okular, which is a nice PDF reader, but doesn’t save annotations on top of the PDF file, which makes annotations inaccessible in other viewers.
how to annotate pdf

Crocodoc – Great For Collaborative Annotation

Crocodoc is a polished viewer and annotator for PDF, MS Word, MS Powerpoint, PNG, and JPG files. You might be reminded of Aviary’s Falcon tool, which lets you annotate images (great for anyone that wants to annotate a screenshot), and web-based PDF and document viewers, like Zoho’s excellent Viewer, and the Google Docs viewer, but Crocodoc also accepts other file types and has a few other features up its sleeves. Crocodoc also uses HTML5 and CSS3 instead of Flash to display documents with minimal loss of quality when compared to the original files. You don’t even need to create an account as you can upload a file right away when you land on the website. You get a simple viewer with zooming, text (which you can use to fill out forms), drawing, highlighting and commenting tools after your file gets converted.
how to annotate pdf
What makes it stand out from the other PDF annotators in this list is that it allows you to share your marked-up PDF file with a shortened link, and even with embed codes! Once you share it, you can choose to let your viewers add comments to your document. The other unique feature is that you can collaborate with others so you can all view and annotate the file together, even if you’re in remote locations. You can then see all of the changes made to the document in a sidebar. Crocodoc allows you to download the original file as well as the annotated version, which you can view in Sumatra, Evince or your favorite PDF reader, with annotations and all.
annotate pdf
Honorable mentions would go to PDFVue, (which has many of the same features that PDFEscape offers in slick interface, but brands marked up PDF files with a DocQ watermark) and FillAnyPDF (which is a beautiful form filler and PDF annotator, but in my tests, it didn’t seem to save the annotations to the PDF file so they weren’t visible when used with a desktop viewer).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document?  That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...
1 comment
Read more

Boom, the startup that wants to build supersonic planes, just signed a massive deal with Virgin

Have you heard about Boom? Boom is a relatively new startup that’s aiming to build something pretty crazy. They’re not building an app… or a social network… or even some new gadget for the Kickstarter crowd. Boom wants to build planes. Really, really, really fast planes. Specifically, they’re trying to design and build a supersonic passenger plane that goes 2.2x the speed of sound. If all goes to plan, they’ll be able to shuttle people from New York to London in 3.5 hours, and SF to Tokyo in 4.5. Sound crazy? I wouldn’t disagree. It’s worth noting that the company is in the very early days for something as intensive, massive, and hugely expensive as designing and producing a passenger aircraft. They’re still working on their first prototype, and hope to fly it by late next year. But it’s also worth noting that the team behind the plane has some serious talent in its blood: the company’s 11 employees have collectively contributed to over 30 aircrafts — having worked on thin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...
1 comment
Read more