Software : Round up: The best free PDF editor 2016 |
- Round up: The best free PDF editor 2016
- Round up: The best free screen recorder 2016
- Chrome's next trick aims to make the web a safer place to shop
Round up: The best free PDF editor 2016 Posted: Free PDF editorsThe best PDF editorAdobe describes PDF as "three letters that changed the world", and it has a point: the Portable Document Format, to give it its Sunday name, was invented by Adobe to make it easy to share electronic documents. It's now an open standard used in everything from publishing to public bodies, and there are stacks of tools to create, edit, annotate and organise PDFs. But which is the best? We've sorted through the options and picked out the very best PDF editor you can download. If you're a Mac user, don't forget about the Preview app - it's a very useful PDF editor in its own right, although some other programs can do even more. 1. Foxit ReaderFlexible and powerful, Foxit Reader is the best free PDF editor around
2. Adobe ReaderAdobe's cross-platform PDF editor is superb for marking up documents Yes, Adobe Reader on the desktop has a reputation for being overly complex and overly needy - but the iOS and Android editions haven't inherited its flaws and stand on their own virtual feet as fast, flexible and lightweight PDF editors.
3. PDF24 CreatorA printer driver with added editing features for perfect conversions One of the simplest ways to create PDFs in Windows is to install a PDF printer driver. Windows sees it as a printer driver, but instead of controlling hardware it actually converts documents to PDFs.
4. Adobe Acrobat DC (trial)Edit text, replace and tweak images, add signatures and much more besides The DC stands for Document Cloud, and Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is designed to cover every eventuality - for a price. You can try out the software for free, but the license is an annual subscription that works out at £11.42 (about US$15, AU$20) per month for the Standard editor and £13.33 (about US$18, AU$20) per month for Pro.
5. Nitro PDF ReaderSurprisingly powerful, with support for both image and text editing
6. PDF-XChange EditorA free PDF editor with OCR for converting image-based PDFs Tracker's PDF-XChange Editor comes in three and a half flavors: a free Lite version for non-commercial use, two paid-for versions at US$43.50 (about £30, AU$60) and US$54.50 (about £40, AU$70) respectively, and stripped-down version of the less expensive premium edition.
7. SlimPDF ReaderA tiny tool that's lacking features, but won't stress underpowered PCs The name should set expectations here: SlimPDF Reader promises to be "10% of the size of Adobe Reader but views 100% of PDFs". It's microscopic by app standards - just 1.43MB - and that's largely because it doesn't really do anything other than view PDFs.
8. Icecream PDF ConverterSplit hefty documents into manageable sections before conversion Icecream PDF Converter comes from the same developer as the useful Icecream Ebook Reader (which also doubles as a good-looking PDF viewer). This PDF editor and reader is all about the file formats, though. You can drag and drop PDFs onto the app and convert them to JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, EPS, HTML or WMF format, and you can also convert ebooks and Microsoft Office documents to PDF.
9. AbleWordConvert documents from text format to PDF, and vice versa Here's a blast from the past: AbleWord looks very like an old version of Microsoft Word or a recent OpenOffice app. It works like those apps too, but the unique selling point here is that it supports PDF files as well as the usual DOC, DOCX and RTF formats, and that means it's a handy PDF editor for anybody who needs to create documents in PDF format or convert between Word and PDF formats.
10. PDFsam BasicA versatile tool for merging and splitting PDFs in multiple configurations PDFsam is an acronym of PDF Split and Merge, so you can probably guess what it does. Yep, it splits and merges PDFs.
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Round up: The best free screen recorder 2016 Posted: Screen recordersThe best free screen recorderFancy becoming the next PewDiePie, showing other people how to play big name games on YouTube? Would you like to make demos to show off your apps, or to teach others how to use specific software? Then you need a screen recorder. The simplest screen recorders simply capture what's on your screen and save it in AVI format, but the more advanced free tools also offer editing, additional audio, picture-in-picture and on-screen drawing. These are our favorites. 1. CamStudioAn open source screen recorder more flexible than most paid-for tools
CamStudio is designed to record in AVI format, which you can also convert to Flash video, and you can adjust the video quality and choose between capturing the entire screen or just part of it. The app also offers picture-in-picture video and anti-aliased captions.
2. FRAPSWith high-resolution recording, FRAPS is the go-to choice for gamers Designed specifically for recording games, FRAPS is free to use if you don't need your clips to be longer than 30 seconds. That's not enough for a Minecraft tutorial, of course, but it's fine for shorter clips - and with a maximum possible resolution of 7,680 x 4,800 it's capable of recording even cutting-edge graphics.
3. BandicamAnother recorder targeted at gamers, with hardware acceleration built in Another screen recorder aimed primarily at gamers, Bandicam boasts an interface reminiscent of 2001 A Space Odyssey's HAL and is packed with features including hardware acceleration and an optional overlay showing frames per second.
4. ezvidRecord, annotate and upload directly to YouTube without leaving the app The marketing for this screen recorder is a bit excitable - it compares ezvid's video editing tools to expensive paid-for packages without mentioning that free apps like Avidemux boast the same options - but if you're looking for a straightforward screen recorder then ezvid is very easy to use.
5. Rylstim Screen RecorderNot ideal for gamers, but a great screen recorder for software tutorials Screen recording doesn't get much simpler than this: launch Rylstim Screen Recorder, click 'Start record', and press F9 when you're done. It's not one for would-be games vloggers - there's no support for sound recording - and it doesn't include any editing tools, but there's a good range of export formats and you can always add audio later in another free app.
6. FlashBack ExpressCapture what you want, when you want with scheduled recording FlashBack Express is free to use, but you need to request a registration key from its developer to download it. Scheduled recording is the main attraction here, enabling you to start capturing your screen at a certain time or (more usefully) when you open a particular program. It doesn't restrict on the amount of footage you can capture at once, but you can set your own maximum time or file size to avoid creating huge, unwieldy videos. You can also break a long video into manageable chunks.
7. Icecream Screen RecorderSave your recordings in a format of your choice, or upload to YouTube Like all of its developer's free software, Icecream Screen Recorder is beautifully designed and a piece of cake to use. You can record footage from a webcam as well as your screen, add annotations and doodles, and upload the resulting videos directly to YouTube. Some functions (like the ability to record the area immediately around the mouse pointer) are only available in the premium version, but there's more than enough in the free edition for most purposes.
8. eLecta Screen RecorderPut yourself in the frame with eLecta's picture-in-picture recording eLecta Screen Recorder's killer feature is picture-in-picture recording, enabling you to capture your jumps and screams as you make your way through the latest survival horror title, or calmly walk new users through your newly developed personal finance app. You can also watermark your recordings with a custom image, and choose whether to include the cursor and taskbar.
9. TinyTakeEasy to use for quick and simple screen recording tasks TinyTake is a little screen recorder that makes some big promises: not only is it free, it claims to be the best of its breed. It enables you to capture the whole screen or just a region for up to 120 minutes, to annotate the video and to share the results online - provided you have a MangoApps account.
10. HyperCamAn older version of a premium screen recorder, now yours free HyperCam 4.0 is a premium product, but its developer has generously decided to make HyperCam 2.9 available to download free. The older edition is a simple little screen recorder much like eLecta, which captures the action from your screen and saves it in AVI format. Unlike eLecta, however, picture-in-picture recording isn't an option.
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Chrome's next trick aims to make the web a safer place to shop Posted: Google is busy upping its game with Chrome in various different ways – most recently improving its efficiency so the browser doesn't drain laptop batteries so swiftly – and another fresh initiative is a move to tighten things on the security front by clearly showing when the likes of online shopping sites are failing to use HTTPS. HTTPS connections are secure and encrypted to protect any data transferred – which is obviously vital when that's the likes of your credit card details, or account passwords – whereas plain HTTP connections don't offer that security and leave users potentially open to exploits. Currently with Chrome, if you're visiting a site which uses HTTPS, that fact is highlighted clearly by a green lock icon next to the URL in the address bar. Sites which use HTTP are simply marked with a neutral icon (although if you click it, this will inform you that 'your connection to this site is not private'). Risky businessHowever, starting with Chrome 56 (due to arrive at the beginning of next year), Google will actually flag sites which use HTTP and transmit financial/card details or passwords as 'Not secure'. Thus letting users see more clearly that they're taking something of a risk. In a blog post spotted by CNET, Emily Schechter of the Chrome Security Team observed that this was part of a "long-term plan to mark all HTTP sites as non-secure". So while this might just be a measure for websites dealing with sensitive data when it first arrives with Chrome 56, eventually it will apply to every site across the web – and such sites will be clearly marked with a red triangle warning icon. This is, essentially, Google's not-so-subtle nudge to website developers to get their skates on transferring over to use HTTPS. How many websites in total now use HTTPS? According to Google's stats drawn from its browser, just over half of Chrome desktop page loads are completed over HTTPS.
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