How to view PDF without focus stealing

Help & Support
1

Hi there! o)

This is surely something which is not new to us, everyone can deal with that behaviour occasionally, but currently I have to work on a whole lot of pdf files and this is getting really annoying. o) Is there a viewer with activex preview that does not steal focus while browsing through the files or attempting to rename them?

I currently use an older version of FoxIt Reader, I heard of others like "Sumatra" but would like to get around trying for days which one would allow me to work as usual with files in the lister. Hiding the viewer pane is not an option, since I need to look at the files, check dates and content etc..

I hope there is relief out there! Thanks! o)

2

Preview Handlers (viewers which also work in Windows Explorer) should not take the focus, as part of the API contract. Some still do, however.

ActiveX controls will take the focus and don't generally work properly if not given focus, at least for a moment. We try to then take it back from them but it doesn't always work.

Essentially, the answer is to look for a PDF viewer which includes a Preview Handler, and then complain to whoever makes it if it still takes focus. If it does, it'll probably do so in Explorer as well so you can complain without having to bring Opus into it or worrying that they'll use Opus as an excuse not to fix things.

3

Try PDF-XChange Editor.

4

Thank you! o)

I tried:

  • PDF Previewer (win7pdf.com/PDFPreviewerSetup.exe)
    Very slow, kinda ugly interface and no good at all.

  • Foxit PDFPreview Handler (download1.timheuer.com/FoxitPdfP ... up_1_1.msi)
    Not better than the old regular Foxit ActiveX I used.
    It's even worse since it displays an annoying banner at the top in the preview.. aaand also steals focus.

  • PDF-XChange (downloads.pdf-xchange.com/PDFXVE6.zip)
    Thank you Kundal. Despite the weird look and feel of the GUI, it seems to be quite nice. The ActiveX works good (steals focus of course) and the preview handler also works nicely and does not steal focus. A win! o) First steps in the actual PDF Editor got me quickly into "limited demo functionality" corners and the 100MB download is quite heavy, but hey. It works! o)

  • Sumatra PDF (kjkpub.s3.amazonaws.com/sumatra ... nstall.exe)
    Also works very good for previewing, it does not steal focus. The preview does not have any kind of information though (number of pages).
    It is the fastest previewer and viewer in the pool. Small footprint (3-4MB download only).

So I will go with PDF-XChange as preview handler and open PDFs for viewing with Sumatra for now. Sumatra is really fast and also comes in "text selection" mode by default. Selecting text directly in the viewer pane is something you loose when switching from an ActiveX handler to a dumb preview handler, but you can't have everything I guess.

Now I actually could go on and do some work, but all the pdf context menus are gone:

It just doesn't end! o)

5

Adobe Reader is actually fairly lightweight these days and works quite well.

6

Is it? I did not take a look at it for several years. Back in the days it started to get slow and bloated and I moved over to Foxit.
What software gets leaner nowadays, it's hard to believe it's lightweight now! o) But if you say so, I might give it a go on next occasion. Thanks! o)

7

I've found it more lightweight these past couple of years, too. The old one was a bull in a china shop. I'm guessing Adobe got tired of the complaints about how large and slow it was.

8

Thank you! o) Now that you are two I need to ask. Does the Adobe Reader come with activex and/or preview handler? Does it work good/at all in conjunction with the DO viewer panel (does it steal focus and does the preview give some extra information like number of pages or a navigation bar)?

9

Seems to be a preview handler, and no it doesn't take focus.

10

Ok, thanks. Is there any navigation bar/extra information (number of pages etc.) visible on that or just the plain pdf document?

11

Along the bottom is a dark-themed bar. On the left are two arrows (for previous and next page) and a page symbol (without arrows represent a toggle to fit the whole page and with arrows to indicate "fit to page width"). On the right end of the bar is page number indicator ("1 of 2", "2 of 2").

I purposely made the preview pane really narrow so this bar wouldn't be super-long.


12

Nice to see how it looks. Thank you! o) Unfortunately the "toolbar" is less functional in comparison to the one the PDF-XChange preview handler offers, so I think I will stick to that for now. The Adobe version looks much better, no doubt about that. o)

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13

I have Acrobat Reader DC here, but there is one thing annoying me all the time. It's not possible to generally turn off that big, useless side bar at the right. or at least remember its state. I don't know, how developers can have ideas like that, since it seems to upset a lot of users.

14

I found instructions quite a while ago to change it so it didn't display the sidebar anymore.

On this page (forums.adobe.com/thread/1817184), follow the instruction tmmcentyre gave. It's response number 6.

Although, I note Adobe in direct reply to the OP, indicates they have finally fixed the problem in a July update. So, if you haven't tried to change the setting in the last few months, maybe it will work properly now.

15

Thanks, but unfortunatley no luck with that trick :frowning: , using version 2015.020.20042. The updater says, that there is no update. Maybe i'm using some abandoned older version?

16

I just checked and laughed out loud. According to their own download page, you are using a newer version than they would have you download.

So the reply #6 trick doesn't work anymore? That's a bummer. It worked for me many months ago, before work upgraded me to the full version of Acrobat.