SourceForge sat down with Chris Truxaw, founder of Red Software, the company that pioneered PDF editing and form filling on the web to learn more about RAD PDF.
“PDF” is a household name, but how long has RAD PDF been around?
RAD PDF has been around for over 15 years now. Our technology’s been used by millions of people, starting as early as 2007. While many users never realized they were using RAD PDF technology, sites around the globe (including one of the world’s most popular free PDF editors, PDFescape) use it to seamlessly integrate PDF editing without worrying about browser or device requirements.
The technology behind RAD PDF is widely regarded as the first and most widely compatible web based PDF editor / PDF form filler / PDF annotator. It still gracefully supports legacy browsers like Internet Explorer 6, as well as the latest mobile and touch environments. Our goal has always been to make digital documents as freely accessible to our users as paper documents, without apps, plugins, or “readers.” And we’re proud to license this technology to others.
In fact, the team behind RAD PDF continues to allow anyone to test our online PDF editor, free of charge, at www.radpdf.com/demo/upload/.
PDF editors and form fillers are common, but what’s unique about RAD PDF?
RAD PDF is a lightweight, web based solution in a sea of expensive and resource intensive alternatives. Software alternatives often require gigabytes of space to install, while RAD PDF requires less than a quarter megabyte (< 0.25 MB) of data transfer to open a PDF!
RAD PDF focuses on the most common PDF editing tasks like form filling, image / text additions, markup annotations, and signatures – making its interface easy for beginners while still customizable for advanced uses. Our low overhead GUI loads from your website within seconds, without any client installation.
In a world of apps, plugins, and software downloads, RAD PDF allows PDF editing in just about any web browser, even mobile devices, without users having to set up anything. This seamless
integration has been a primary reason organizations have been licensing RAD PDF for over a decade.
What’s so important about a universal GUI (graphical user interface)?
There is nothing more frustrating than being told to change browsers or download an app when navigating to a website. With its nearly universally compatible web GUI, RAD PDF saves users this frustration by offering features and levels of control over PDF files most developers would only expect in an app.
Even though it’s time consuming development, we aim to support as many browsers and platforms as possible, because at its core, what we’re doing can be done with 2001 technology. It may not work perfectly, but those who tell you it’s impossible are just lazy. (I’ll admit though that some of our edge case support is probably borderline overkill.)
In short, our customers set browser requirements for all sorts of reasons. We just don’t want RAD PDF to be one of them.
Why did you create RAD PDF?
The creation of RAD PDF was actually preceded by another product from our company. In 2002, prior to RAD PDF or online PDF editing, we created a lesser-known Windows desktop application called PDFtypewriter. Functioning as a simple software based “typewriter” for PDF documents, this initial product was our first solution for PDF files.
Upon seeing Writely (later Google Docs) and similar web-based adaptations of Microsoft Office products, I recognized that there would be a need for the same with PDF documents and that’s where RAD PDF started to take shape.
We experimented with several prototypes before the first working version of RAD PDF was released.
Early versions of RAD PDF didn’t recognize form fields or annotations and much imitated our PDFtypewriter product, which merely allowed “typed” additions to the document. As annotations and form fields became more common, we added full support for the most common interactive features and widgets like form fields, sticky notes, text markup, and more. Additionally, we’ve come to better support PDF features like calculations, formatting, and JavaScript than many third party PDF desktop applications.
RAD PDF continues to improve and now even supports the latest ASP.NET environments like Core, ASP.NET 5 / 6, and Linux deployment.
These constant, incremental improvements keep RAD PDF up to date with both the latest user expectations and industry standards, while requiring minimal code changes from our customers. Even a decade and half later, some of our first customers continue to rely and trust us.
What does RAD PDF require?
In short, any reasonably modern ASP.NET environment. RAD PDF is compatible with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1+, 4.x, Core, 5, 6, etc. We have numerous customers using Azure App Services and other PaaS options too. MVC, Razor, and WebForms ready, RAD PDF can be used as a WebControl or wired up to almost any front end. We’re excited about helping customers run under any ASP.NET environment, even Linux!
Because RAD PDF runs on your infrastructure, we’ve built in a lot of configurability and flexibility. For example, session management and document storage can all be replaced with your own custom implementations if you wish to set up something specialized for your needs. If you’re running into problems, please contact us for support and we’ll be happy to help.
What about compliance?
Because RAD PDF installs directly on your servers, compliance with any access, privacy, or security requirements is a breeze. All data and user input remain inside your infrastructure, allowing for rapid approval and integration in most companies.
We work with numerous government, medical, and other sensitive environments. RAD PDF is not a service / SaaS / PaaS, so it runs entirely within your parameters. But because of its flexibility, it scales efficiently in cloud environments like AWS or Azure. This also leaves compliance and security entirely in your hands, allowing for your RAD PDF implementation to meet GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and other requirements easily.
Where else is RAD PDF used?
RAD PDF has been licensed by thousands of cities, counties, states, nations, universities, hospitals, pharmacies, and major corporations. Licensed nearly world-wide, RAD PDF continues to be a component of important web applications, both public and private, in the United States and abroad. But again, often without a user noticing.
Across the platforms where it is employed, our technology helps to protect content, streamline PDF form integration, facilitate custom integrations, and even document signing.
Its flexible APIs allow RAD PDF to solve a wide variety of problems.
Where do you see the future of PDF software?
Like all professionally needed software, the future is on the web. RAD PDF was first to the space, but how our society embraces digital formats is rapidly changing. We see more workflows accepting consent / information without a paper representation, but PDF continues to be the de facto representation of paper. As long as “paper” documents represent how we do business, PDF software will continue to be needed. From our perspective, we expect significant growth in the future of the industry.
That said, the industry is well saturated with options. RAD PDF enjoys a long history of reliability and security, proven by its use in the field for more than a decade. Our featureset is unmatched by most alternatives, and our pricing significantly lower than competitors.
We now offer both perpetual and subscription based licensing and, as a small company ourselves, we are happy to work with companies to provide prompt, personalized services and software products which best meet their changing needs.
Related Categories