February 22, 2011 in Hot Technology by Scott Pasho

As the growth in the marketplace of mobile devices such as Smartphone’s, tablets and laptops/notebooks seems to have no ceiling – one wonders how effective they are for viewing documents on-the-fly. We all know how easy these tools are to use for messaging, GPS and other apps, but how about for effectively perusing and processing documents for business? Especially the small screens found on iPhones, Blackberries, Droids and others – can they really become an effective business tool for viewing and executing contracts, forms and other documents for on-the-go professionals?

One of the keys for mobile technology – aside from having secure access to the documents in the first place, is the conversion of the information for smaller screens, if so desired. Some document viewing options link mobile devices to documents located on a computer or server – and upload a stripped down version of the file, removing page borders, formatting and images, for basic content reviewing only. While this option will work in some instances, a great many corporate documents must remain unaltered, and therefore may not be suitable for this method.

A better solution is to review files via a secure fully compliant Web browser that can provide real-time access from virtually anywhere. While this method doesn’t eliminate the need to do some scrolling to view documents on small screens, it does provide the benefit of a server-side solution – no need to install anything on the client – a boon for both users and IT support staff.

New browser technology exists for Web sites with the ability to resize what is displayed based upon the number of screen pixels – for example, a multi-column Web site can become one column for smart phone viewing. Until documents can be manipulated easily in this manner (and there will still be issues with some that may not be altered due to the legal issues mentioned above), viewing of these files is either compressed to a very small size on small screens – or by viewing pieces of the document by scrolling. So, the answer for now for easy mobile document viewing – is to buy portable tablet computers.

Tablets Coupled with Viewing Technology – the New Frontier

Tablets offer a light and portable device that provides a fully Web-compliant browser with a screen large enough so that scrolling doesn’t become a major issue for mobile document viewing. Tablet offerings include devices from a variety of computer manufacturers, Barnes & Noble’s Web-enabled Nook reader, and of course, Apple’s iPad.

The 2011 Consumer Electronics (CES) saw the introduction of a wide variety of tablet computing devices launched as competition to Apple’s iPad. As predicted, virtually every major player in the consumer electronics marketplace unveiled a tablet – some with mixed reviews. While feature sets, operating systems and network compatibility varied between tablet providers, the one thing successful products offered were screens all in the 10 inch size range, a good size for viewing (and reviewing) document and image files.

Employing a universal viewing application ensures maximum efficiency and effectiveness when viewing documents – both for internal users across the enterprise, as well as offsite users. An application such as VirtualViewer from Snowbound Software provides a professional-grade Pure HTML viewer (no download or client installation required) that operates on Apple’s iPad, as well as smart phones. VirtualViewer displays virtually all document and image formats (MS Office, PDF, TIFF, and more), enables the ability to mark-up/annotate, and gives users access to content without compromising document formatting or retrieval speed.

Document viewers provide a great many efficiencies for workflow and forms processing. The ability to display a document thumbnail panel that highlights either the pages from one document, or the first page from multiple documents, and access to user-defined document sets that extract pages from multiple documents in advance to speed review. And coupled with portable computing – users realize these advantages from virtually anywhere.