When comparing PDF Studio Viewer vs Google Chrome, the Slant community recommends PDF Studio Viewer for most people. In the question“What are the best PDF viewers for UNIX-like systems?” PDF Studio Viewer is ranked 7th while Google Chrome is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose PDF Studio Viewer is:
It GUI is user friendly and well designed with its ribbon menu. It's actually very similar to what you can find in a MS Word or Adobe Pro environment. It has all the features you can imagine for commenting/marking the PDF, creating forms, and editing PDF files. It is available on all platforms: Windows, MacOS, AND LINUX.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro The Only Complete PDF editing/viewer tool available for all platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Unix)
It GUI is user friendly and well designed with its ribbon menu. It's actually very similar to what you can find in a MS Word or Adobe Pro environment. It has all the features you can imagine for commenting/marking the PDF, creating forms, and editing PDF files. It is available on all platforms: Windows, MacOS, AND LINUX.
Pro Responsive to critiques
They are actively looking for ways to improving their products. For example, they made some improvements in PDF Studio 2018 after a PCWorld review came out in 2017.
Pro Digital signatures
PDF Studio Viewer is the only free PDF viewer for Linux that recognized digital signatures from docusign in a way that lets you easily verify the signatures.
Pro Advanced print & search options
PDF Studio Pro is a really useful PDF editor. This is more like Adobe Acrobat earlier versions, in terms of look and feel. That’s user friendly. Command icons are clear with tooltip already written. Menu is elaborated well break-up. Also, all the functions seems to be available.
Pro Measurement tools
Pro PRO Suitable for both basic users and more advanced Acrobat veterans
I was looking for a decent alternative to Acrobat, as it was the last thing my dad needed to make the switch to Linux. Tired of paying per month for proprietary software I wouldn't actually own, I went on a quest to find multi-platform PDF editing software. Unfortunately, it isn't FOSS, however, the license is owned in perpetuity and you are helping out lesser known devs who've made a great product. Pros * All of the features needed for the average acrobat user. * Edit, merge comment, measure, tools suitable for both basic users and more advanced Acrobat veterans. * Speed. Even in a VM using a paltry 1 GB of ram, I was able to merge multiple documents and watermark effortlessly. I generated a study guide from handwritten notes in seconds. * Create from the scanner is incredibly useful. * Multiplatform compatibility
Pro PDF Studio Viewer is the fastest PDF viewer on Linux
It'd be nice if a FOSS source viewer were out in front here, but sadly not. It would be even nicer if PDF and Adobe's dead hand hadn't become the standard doc format. but sadly we have to live with this.
Pro User-friendly advanced printing
The easiest software I found for printing multiple pages on Linux Mint. All other software require inputting pages by numbers, here, you can just select the ones you want to print, choose the format of multiple pages (horizontal/vertical) and it all comes with a beautiful gui. I used to love adobe and foxit on windows, but those programs suck on linux.
Pro Loupe tool
Pro As of 2018 supports text, markup & graphical annotations, as well as form filling
Pro Excellent HTML 5 feature support
Pro Syncs between devices
By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser.
Pro Simple user interface
For example, the address bar is also the search bar. Google calls it Omnibox.
Pro Great built-in developer tools
Chrome comes with built-in developer tools, making testing and enhancing web pages simpler for those of us involved in working with such technologies. As well as being beneficial to developers, this also has some benefit to non-technical users; in that by making testing simpler for developers those developers are more likely to use Chrome for their tests, and can spend more time making improvements over investigating underlying causes of issues.
Pro Plenty of extensions
There are far more available on this browser than any other, and that may matter for some.
Pro Good performance
According to TopTen Reviews, Chrome is currently one of the best performing browsers for initial (cold) startup, average startup, and navigation times. Works very well with the uBlock Origin adblocker.
Pro Automatically updates
Chrome updates in the background ensuring you're always on the latest version. This makes it much more likely that sites will work on your browser, since (almost) all Chrome users will be running exactly the same version.
Pro Multiple account login
You can have multiple Chromes with different accounts logged at the same time. And it is really easy to manage different accounts.
Pro Works great with many extensions
Unlike Firefox, Google Chrome can keep its fast performance regardless of how many extensions are installed. With more than 10 extensions Firefox gets slower and slower in a geometric progression rate. Google Chrome doesn't care how many extensions the user has installed - 3 or 133 it still performs great.
Pro Customizable by user
Each of the managed users can have their own configuration (themes, extensions, ...)
Pro Can translate text directly
Pro Uses Blink
It uses the blink rendering engine which has removed many legacy khtml/webkit code to be much lighter and faster.
Pro Only one distributor
Unlike those various unofficial Chromium builds, there is only one distributor, so all Chrome releases follow the same standards.
Pro Sandboxed Tabs
Every tab runs as their own process, so if one crashes or becomes unresponsive, the whole browser isn't affected.
Pro Chrome is faster than Firefox
Pro Simple interface
Pro Data collection
Chrome uses online services to collect our data and improve our browser experience. But this also means it spies on you.
Pro Engine is open-source
Chromium is open source, except the proprietary media codecs like AAC, H.264, MP3 and Adobe Flash, that can't be legally open-sourced.
Pro Popular
As of March 2015, Chrome is the most popular browser on the internet, with a 43.9% - 63.7% market share, Its rendering engine Blink is also the most used rendering engine and used in many products including: Opera, Vivaldi, Qt, Brave, Steam or Electron meaning most developers will be testing their sites against this browser to ensure compatibility.
Pro Backed and supported by Google
Whilst Chrome is based on the open source browser Chromium, Google reviews this code and build on top of it. This means it takes (and contributes to) a number of the benefits of the open source model whilst having the resources, support and investment of a major company.
Pro Plays more media formats than any open source browser
Includes support for many licensed unfree media formats.
Pro Multimedia Plugins and Codecs included
Google Chrome comes with its own flashplayer and the most common multimedia codecs so you don't have to worry that they are outdated nor do you need to install them as a third party package.
Cons
Con Proprietary software
This is proprietary software using a freeware model. It is not open-source.
Con Requires Java!
What's the most bloated runtime platform in the history of computing? Java! This app actually tried to install a JVM on my machine without asking... not having it.
Con CON Free version add a watermark
The free version will add a watermark, which is kind of annoying but I guess necessary for them.
Con Extra features require payment
Any feature not included in the freeware version requires purchasing a license to upgrade.
Con Online tracking by default
Chrome allows opting out of tracking by going to Settings > Advanced > Privacy and un-checking any unwanted services. Alternatively Chromium can be used to get a similar browser experience without Google's services on top of it.
Con Huge memory hog
Each tab and extension in the browser uses significant chunks of RAM, giving the browser poor performance on machines without enough RAM to supply.
Con Bad for battery life
Drains battery life on both Windows laptops and Macs much quicker than the alternatives. It can shave hours off the battery life of any non Chromebook laptop.
Con Not fully open-source
While most of Chrome is open source: Chrome does have some closed-source components to make it possible to play some closed media formats.
Con Increasingly slow
When Chrome first came out, it was known for being lightweight and very speedy. Over the years, more and more features have been added to Chrome. Because of this, crashes, errors, and general laggy-ness has increased noticeably.
Con It's Google
Data collection!
Con No mobile extensions
Chrome on Android and iOS does not support extensions.
Con Not as customizable as Firefox or Vivaldi
Con Big target for hackers
Chrome is the most popular browser in the world. That makes it the most targeted browser in the world by hackers.
Con Hard/impossible to transfer passwords to a different machine without uploading them to Google
Con Bad quality control on extensions
Some just plain don't work while a few actually break the browser.
Con Basic
Unlike Brave and Vivaldi which are more stable and have more features, Chrome is pretty basic.
Con Blurred fonts on Windows
Fonts on Windows are blurred, that is especially noticeable in light fonts on dark background. Small italic text is hard to read.
Con No menu bar on Windows
There's no menu bar, except on Mac OS or Linux appmenu.
Con Does not hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly
Chrome is unable to hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly which makes playing 4k video on laptops a poor experience filled with lag.
Though there is a workaround for YouTube in that a plugin can be installed to force Flash playback instead of HTML5, which plays smoothly and has no HW acceleration issues. There's another plugin (h264ify) that will force to use the h.264 codec video if available instead of the VP9 one which is the resource hog.
Con No reader view
Unlike most other browsers, Chrome doesn't have a reader view function.