Built-In PDF Viewing

Mail Application – The iPad supports viewing PDF files that are sent as attachments via email in the Mail application. Simply download the attachment, click to launch, and you can view the PDF.

Safari Web Browser - Also, selecting a link to a PDF file in the Safari web browser will also allow you to view an image inline.

In both cases, notice that there is a border around the pages in the PDF content. I would prefer to have the content take up more of the screen. No problem – just pinch and zoom in to hide the borders. This choice is remembered as you navigate to subsequent pages.

There are limitations to the built-in support, however. If you reopen a PDF file, it does not maintain the  last read page location. And if there are clickable links in the PDF, such as in the Table of Contents, you cannot click on them. So, you’re stuck scrolling down potentially hundreds of pages to get to the location you want.

Ideally, I would like to see Apple include their Preview application on the iPad. Even if it was only a PDF viewer and did not allow changes to PDFs, being able to jump directly to a particular page and use general PDF navigation would be helpful.

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