previewing PDF files in Windows Vista system

We have previously described the preview feature of Windows Vista, which is a fairly useful feature that allows users to view the contents of a file without opening the file, which can greatly improve the efficiency of daily work. The Windows Vista preview feature supports objects including pictures, audio, video, fonts, text, e-mail, and even Office documents such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

However, for PDF (Portable document Format) files, it is not so fortunate that you cannot implement a preview of a PDF file even after you have installed Office 2007 in Windows Vista that can create PDFs. To view the contents of the corresponding PDF file, the user has to install and run Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Recently, Tim Heuer has released a gadget called PDF Preview handler that allows users without Adobe Acrobat reader to preview PDF files in Explorer or Outlook 2007.

The tool does not require additional settings and is ready to use after downloading. This way, when you select the PDF file in Explorer, its contents are displayed in the preview pane.

It is also necessary to point out that the tool has no problem with support for Chinese PDF files. The following is a preview of the Windows Vista Tutorial Chapter III PDF file, which you can see the contents of the PDF document including the pictures and Chinese characters are displayed correctly.