Foxit Reader Wiki

	Foxit Reader wiki
Category System Utilities Other

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Foxit Reader

Developed by	Foxit Software
Latest release	3.0.1506 / 2009-3-9; 285 days ago
Operating system	Microsoft Windows,Linux
Available in	English
Type	PDF viewer
License	Freeware
Website	www.foxitsoftware.com

Foxit Reader is a multilingual PDF reader. The basic reader can be downloaded for free, while the full version is available for a fee. Foxit Reader is notable for its short load time and small filesize, which has been compared favorably to Adobe Reader^[1]^[2]. It is not able to read PDX files (searchable catalogs), which limits its utility for use with document collections, and it does not handle the text ligatures correctly during text search and copy.

1 Installation procedure
2 Versions
3 Security issues
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Installation procedure

Foxit Reader is available in .exe, .msi and .zip packages. The installer version of Foxit Reader is bundled with potentially unwanted applications, and may make changes to the user system without his/her approval. Thus, PC Advisor recommends to be "diligent when installing Foxit Reader to ensure the program doesn't install unwanted software." They found that Foxit Reader "attempted to install a Firefox plug-in, made Ask [their] default search engine and created desktop, quick launch and Start Menu icons for eBay."^[3] Some of these features can be disabled during the setup process and are not present in the .zip version of the package.

[edit] Versions

Foxit Reader v3.x is available for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows ME through Vista,^[4] Windows Mobile 2003 and 5.0, and Windows CE 4.2 and 5.0. Foxit Reader allows Windows 98/ME to open Acrobat version 7 and 8 files, which the current version of Adobe's Acrobat reader for those operating systems will not.^[5] It also supports the U3 smart drive when used with Windows 2000 or Windows XP. A test version for Linux exists, but it does not run on some Linux distributions released after 2006 like Ubuntu Edgy and Fedora 9.^[6]
Foxit Reader v3.0 is the latest version which runs on Windows 95 and NT 4.0, v2.0 the latest for Windows 98. It can be downloaded from OldVersion.com. According to the developers a further version will support Windows 98 again.

[edit] Security issues

On August 4th, 2007 a computer virus was discovered in a Foxit Reader addon called Foxit Editor. The virus affected Foxit Editor 2.0 Beta Build 2003.^[7] On May 20 2008, Secunia issued a critical buffer overflow alert. This was remedied in version 2.3.2923.^[8] On March 9 2009, Secunia issued a multiple vulnerabilities alert. This was remedied in versions 2.3.3902 and 3.0.1506.^[9]