iAnnotate slide Editing PDFs on your iPad with iAnnotate
iAnnotate is a great app for graduate students, lawyers, analysts, and scientists reading technical articles and books. As a programmer, I enjoy being able to take my collection of programming books with me when I’m working in a cafe or on a client site.
The app has its own annotation system that you will have to get used to, but in a few minutes you will get familiar with the app and everything will become second nature. You can now freely highlight, underline and draw, as well as markup and additional comments on your PDF files. iAnnotate is also a complete PDF reader so there is no need to buy another PDF app. The PDF reader feature will allow you to continuously scroll and zoom in/out. iAnnotate PDF reader also supports internal and URL links, bookmark help and PDF outlines.
What I loved about this app is the tabbed reading. You can have multiple PDF files open and switch between them just like you would with any tab in a web browser like Firefox. iAnnotate also has a library feature where a database of your PDF library will allow you to easily find and locate your PDF files. The library also keeps track of files you haven’t read, as well as files you’ve annotated. There is also a search function which I found useful which will read your PDF files to find keywords. For example, when I was searching for “AJAX API support”, iAnnotate was able to search my library of programming books and found not only the books, but also the chapters and pages that mentioned what I was looking for.
The great thing about iAnnotate is that as a full PDF reader, it will save your comments and annotations in PDF format. This allows you to send your annotated PDF files to friends and colleagues with all your changes saved in PDF format. It doesn’t matter if you use Adobe Acrobat Reader or another PDF reader like Foxit, the changes will be there without having to buy iAnnotate.
Currently, you can transfer your PDF files via email, iTunes sync, navigate to any PDF link, or use iAnnotate’s proprietary desktop sync. In the future, iAnnotate will integrate with MobileMe and other cloud services depending on the developer. iAnnotate’s developer, Aji LLC, also has the best technical support I’ve come across among app developers. I emailed Aji with a few questions I had and the tech response team sent me a reply 2 hours later! They are also very receptive to user suggestions and welcome your feedback. I told them I wanted a strikethrough feature, not just highlight and underline, and they mentioned that other users wanted that too, and they’re currently developing it for a future update.
To update:
A reader sent us an email on how to submit documents, so below are instructions. How to send documents to your computer with iAnnotate: When you have finished annotating and are ready to send a document: If the document is open:
1. Touch and hold the “file” tab until a dialog box appears.
2. Tap “Upload”
If the document is closed:
1. Tap the “+” at the top left and find the document name.
2. Tap the little “i” next to the document name. You should now see an “Upload” button
3. Tap the “Upload” button and the file will go to your computer
Notes: If you don’t see the charge button or it’s lighter in color or dimmed, it’s likely that you haven’t connected your iPad to your computer. These instructions assume that you have set up a wireless or Bluetooth connection on your desktop.
