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At PDFTron, we are always committed to helping you build better Android apps, faster. The feedback we receive from our customers and the millions of Xodo users is a big reason why our SDK powers the world's most popular Android applications (like Xodo, DocuSign, Diligent, and SignEasy).
In 2018, we had 11 PDFTron Android SDK releases and have made many improvements based on your feedback:
- Improved developer experience
- Easier to integrate
- New fully featured drop-in activity and fragment
- New annotation style picker
- 13 new annotation creation tools
- Additional customization APIs
- API for annotation collaboration
- and more
Improved developer experience
In 2018, we took a major step forward in helping your developer experience when using the PDFTron Android SDK. 73 Android specific guides were added to help you get the most out of the SDK and build your applications faster.
Easier to integrate
Library integration has been fully revamped because you told us you'd like to choose your favorite package manager when integrating, as well as with the Android Archive (AAR) library files. You can now integrate with the PDFTron Android SDK with a few familiar steps:
Library initialization process is also made simple with automatic initialization through the content provider.
Drop-in activity and fragment
You also told us that you'd like build your app with less development resource, so you can go to market faster. Using the drop-in activity and fragment , you will be able to put up a fully functional document reader and editor in no time. You can then customize it any way you wish to suit your needs.
New annotation style picker
Annotation is one of the most important features of the PDFTron SDK. Thanks to your feedback, we've redone the key UI component for annotation editing, the annotation style picker. The modern looking annotation style picker is aimed to be user friendly and designed to maximize user productivity.
New annotation creation tools
Throughout 2018, 13 new annotation/form field creation tools with their corresponding editing tools were introduced based on popular requests. Here's the new tools at a glance:
| Form field type | Creation tool |
|---|---|
| Text field | TextFieldCreate |
| Checkbox field | CheckboxFieldCreate |
| Signature field | SignatureFieldCreate |
Additional customization APIs
We've heard frustrations from developers about the limitations of other solutions, and how they appreciated our SDK because it gives them more freedom to build unique world-class user experiences (and ultimately a successful product). Based on your feedback, we added even more customization APIs, for example:
- API to add views on PDFViewCtrl easily
- API to show and hide tools
- API to have custom behavior in response to tool events
- API to add custom annotation creation tool
- API to customize annotation tools and widgets
Other highly requested features
Here are some other highly requested features we added based on customer requests:
- API for restricting data usage when streaming online documents
- API for annotation collaboration
- Xamarin API revamped to match the same level of customization as the native platform
- React Native support
Looking ahead to 2019
Thank you for being a valued PDFTron client and providing us with all the great suggestions on how to improve PDFTron Android SDK to maximize your productivity. With growing Android and UX teams, we are excited to introduce new features, products, and take documentation to the next level in 2019.