AjaxPDF Introduces a Whole New Way to Display PDFs

April 17, 2007; 02:11 AM
AjaxPDF enables a ground-breaking new way of viewing, navigating, printing, filling and saving PDFs. AjaxPDF is an ASP.NET 2.0 Web Control that presents Portable Document Format (PDF) documents inline within a Web page. The portable document format (PDF) is the standard in high-fidelity documents and forms, however, PDFs are often criticized as slow, disconnected (yet frequently essential) parts of hundreds of thousands of Web sites. With AjaxPDF, PDFs can now be interactive, integrated features of any Web site.

AjaxPDF improves and then extends the way users interact with PDFs - opening the door for more engaging PDF-based Web applications and ensuring the site's design branding and navigation controls are always available.

Users need only the free Adobe Reader (v7.0.9 or later) - no additional software is required. AjaxPDF's functionality degrades gracefully for user whose systems don't meet the minimum system requirements.

AjaxPDF is a Web component used with Visual Studio 2005 or Microsoft's new free Express editions and served via ASP.NET 2.0. AjaxPDF consists of 5 Web Controls - the presentation control, plus button, drop-down, link, separator and textbox toolbar Web controls. You may also use the many third-party or standard Visual Studio Web controls as toolbar items.

Much of AjaxPDF's functionality can be set declaratively, requiring no or very little code. Alternatively, developers can make use of the rich client and server-side APIs to customize and extend AjaxPDF using JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and any of the supported .Net languages.

Key capabilities include:
- Integrated, inline presentation of PDFs within a Web page that can be completely customized - including the appearance of the PDF display area, toolbar and toolbar items.
- Increased usability of PDFs with pre-built or customizable controls for common navigation, form saving or submitting, zooming, printing and much more. Each control can be used immediately "out-of-the-box", customized, or extended.
- Enable users to fill, submit, save and send PDF forms. No coding or modifications to the PDFs required.
- Easy population of PDF forms using ASP.NET databases, collections and XML files.
- Dynamic PDF creation or on-the-fly manipulation of existing PDFs.
- Easy-to-use, familiar dialog boxes for configuring the PDF's properties, security and other options.

AjaxPDF includes a sample ASP.NET 2.0 Web site with nearly 20 functional, documented examples of AjaxPDF including form population from files and databases, dynamic loading of PDFs, client and server-side event management and creating and displaying PDFs dynamically.

AjaxPDF introductory price is $99 until May 1st when the price will be $149. A fully-functional trial version is available from the Indigo Eight Software Web site.

About Indigo Eight Software
Indigo Eight Software - http://www.indigoeightsoftware.com - develops wildly innovative, cost-effective PDF solutions. The company has grown out of more than 15 years of experience in developing software and solutions for a wide range of customers. Indigo Eight Software is located in Cumberland, RI.