GoodReader for iPhone: New PDF Engine, AirPrint, Improved Annotations

Popular document management / viewing / sharing / all-in-one app GoodReader for iPhone was updated yesterday to include a plethora of new features, improvements and most obvious bug fixes. With this “App Store update” massive trend that is going on this week, it was no surprise to see GoodReader for iPhone show up in the “Updates Available” screen.

This new version of GR adds a brand new PDF displaying engine that allows for smoother zooming and panning, with the possibility to go back to the old engine if the new one isn’t working well for you. Weird choice? Maybe. Still, options are always welcome. The app now also has support for AirPrint (iOS 4.2 is, of course, needed) and sports improved annotations with adjustable drawing opacity and line thickness.

GoodReader for iPhone is available at $2.99 in the App Store. Full changelog below.

- new PDF displaying engine - zooming/panning is a lot smoother now. However, if for some reason the new engine doesn’t work for you, you can always switch back to the original engine with the switch in Settings.

- “Higher quality images” switch in Settings for PDF files. This switch produces higher quality scanned images, but impacts rendering performance noticeably. So try this switch to see which option suits your needs better.

- wireless printing: AirPrint support (iOS 4.2 or later)

- actions available without closing a file - “Open In…”, E-Mail, Print

- “Repair a PDF File” feature. Some damaged files that previously caused GoodReader to display an “Unknown PDF Error” message (and could not be annotated for that matter), can now be automatically repaired.

- support for 256-bit AES encryption in PDF files (iOS 4.2 or later)

- PDF Night Mode brightness slider is now available directly in a viewer, no need to adjust it in Settings any more

- PDF Annotations: adjustable line thickness for drawings

- PDF Annotations: adjustable opacity for drawings

- Redo button in freehand drawing mode

- freehand drawing tool now allows to zoom and pan a page with two fingers, useful for long handwritten notes that do not fit on one screen

- freehand drawing mode now recognizes single taps as dots - no more circles when drawing the “i” letter

- freehand drawing tool now works much faster on pages containing a large number of annotations

- images can now be deleted without closing the image viewer

- fixed the issue with accessing some WebDAV servers based on Microsoft IIS engine

- fixed the issue when annotations created in GoodReader were missing when printing files later from a computer (you’ll need to somehow modify old annotations to fix them, any modification - placement, color, etc. - will make them “printable”)

- accented European characters are now stored correctly in PDF notes (old damaged characters won’t be fixed automatically, so you’ll need to manually re-enter those characters in old notes)

- menus for annotating PDFs can now be accessed when VGA adapter is connected

- fixed various multitasking-related bugs (files being unexpectedly closed when getting back from the background, etc.)