Appatic

When it comes to document formats, it is clear that PDF is king. No one can really deny it. Then, it is all about Microsoft Office formats starting with Word (both .doc and .docx) as the most common.  After that, one could argue the most common may be the ePub eBook format. But not quite. At it is actually XPS if one is talking about professional geared documents.

XPS original  purpose as a document format, unlike what many say, was not Microsoft way to trump PDF. But to have a alternative to it that they could control. In specific have a PDF alternative to offer for Microsoft Office customers. And while it never gained popularity in the consumer market, it is fairly well used in the business and enterprise markets. But more surprisingly, it has started being used as actual alternative to the ePub eBook format by some publishers, vendors and even some eBook pirates.  Reason why it is now not uncommon to see eBooks distributed in this format too.

There is no shortage of eBook readers, but in most cases they are tied to a vendor eBook store front market plus other not essential functions.  So if you want to handle XPS documents for free, you end having to use one of the two free XPS viewers Microsoft provides. Viewers that happen to be OK, but not rich enough or dynamic enough.

aReader is a Open Source .WPF 3.5 based XPS Reader from CodePlex by Agam Fuja Kurniawan. That has the advantage of not being just a XPS document viewer, but an actual reader too. This means you can use it to handle all kinds of XPS documents. No matter if they are work reports or if they are eBooks.

aReader got a well designed app window, that should come off as instantly familiar given it uses the Fluent UI-UX that debuted in Office 2007 you know simply as “The Ribbon”, and that now you can find in many other apps as well. 

Features

• Ribbon Interface
• Multiple-Document View
• One Click Document Navigation Controls
• Jump To Page Navigation Input
• Zooming
• Type Text To Find
• View Document Pages As Thumbnails
• Printing

Works on XP, Vista & 7. In the case of XP, you need to be using a up to date XP SP3 install.

Linkage

aReader Info

aReader 1.0                                       <—Direct Download Link

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