If you frequently use PDF files on your iPad, the developers at Readdle have a treat in store for you with the release of PDF Expert 3.0, the culmination of six months of hard work which the company is billing as “the biggest update ever” -- including a new annotation toolbar, page management preview and speed improvements.

Readdle has announced the release of PDF Expert 3.0, which the company is touting as their biggest update ever for the handy iPad PDF document app. PDF Expert goes beyond simple PDF document reading, allowing iPad users to annotate, sign and even fill PDF forms, and now they can do it faster than ever thanks to the desktop class features introduced with this version.

First up is a new annotation toolbar, which provides PDF Expert 3.0 with a number of features usually reserved only for desktop applications. Tap on the Pencil button on the main toolbar to display the new annotation tools, which include four pens and highlighters for writing comments or even emphasising text in the shape of a line, an arrow, a rectangle or a circle. Users can easily move within a document using a two-finger scroll or two-finger swipe.

Also new with this version is Page Management Preview, a new visual method for acting upon your documents. Among the features are the ability to move pages with drag and drop, add blank pages, copy and paste pages between documents, rotate landscape pages to portrait (or vice versa), delete pages and even extract selected pages as a separate PDF for emailing.

Finally, PDF Expert 3.0 is twice as fast as the previous versions, thanks to new code optimizations, and the company has snuck in a few other little gems including a Recents button, Hyperlink Back button and Clear Annotations button to ramp up the power of the app.

PDF Expert 3.0 is now available from the App Store for only $9.99, and as always, it’s a free update for existing users. The 15.2MB download is compatible with all iPads running iOS 4.0 or later.

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