Adobe Acrobat. Love it or hate it?

[denverbill]

Poll question: Adobe Acrobat. Love it or hate it?

I just dread whenever I see a link says '.pdf'. God only knows if it's going to be 30 seconds or 5 minutes to open the link, if it ever opens. And heaven forbid you want to copy and paste from the link, cause it just ain't going to happen. And of course, it always opens in a font so small you need a microfiche reader to read the text.

Is it just me, or does everyone hate Acrobat?

[VOX]

1. Necessary evil. have to make .pdf files for work...

But yes, I loathe Acrobat and .pdfs in general.

[denverbill]

3. I know others like that.

Why Acrobat though? Is there something you can do with AA that you can't do with a program that creates other file types? Are they more secure or something?

[Wickerman]

5. 6.0 is pretty secure

and generally a .pdf isn't going to be tampered with.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

6. You can create PDFs with OpenOffice

http://www.openoffice.org

Screw Adobe. They had a Russian programmer jailed because he pointed out faults in their e-book copy protection (which is an evil thing in and of itself).

[GOPisEvil]

2. I keep my resume as a .pdf file.

I rather enjoy sending it in that way.

It has warts, but I find it really useful at times.

[nyhuskyfan]

4. I like it for its purposes...

Transferring word files can be a nightmare sometimes -- tabs don't hold, fonts change unexpectedly, margins shrink or expand, etc.

When you make and send a .pdf file, you know that the recipient is going to be able to see the document the same way you created it. It's a big advantage when you're worried about the presentation.

[denverbill]

7. OK, I can't argue that.

I must admit, word docs can look pretty screwy after they've been forwarded 2-3 times.

[progressiveBadger]

9. Microsoft needs to take a hint from Apple

and integrate functionality to "print to PDF" in Windows.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. See post #6. (nt)

[kiahzero]

20. Not to mention that sending attachments as Word docs is evil

Not everyone in the world has, or even wants, Microsoft Office.

[DrWeird]

8. You must have a dial-up?

I hate them on my home computer.

But here in the office they're fine.

[denverbill]

16. No, I have a T1 at work, which is where I use it the most.

I think part of the problem is the 'automatic updating' feature. A lot of the times when it's the slowest to load, I will eventually get the 'update available' screen. I would disable the automatic updates option, if there was a way to disable it, but if there is such a way, I can't find it anywhere.

It might be my hardware, but Acrobat has never been quick for me, whether I just bought a brand new system or it's 3 years old.

I could even understand if I was opening a 1000 page document, if it took 2 minutes then. But when I do open a 1000 page document (eventually), it doesn't even load all the pages, because every page I scroll to has to load.

[calico1]

10. Its okay but I don't like that

you can't save something and do edits on it. No editing. Hate that!

[starroute]

11. Actually, you can copy and paste

There's an icon on the bar -- I think it's a "T" -- that lets you shift to copy text mode. By clicking the little down arrow next to the T, you get an option of copying a single column only. And there's even an image copy mode icon next to that.

And you can use the zoom function to deal with the tiny text.

Still, it's a royal pain. Takes forever to open and everything else comes to a halt while it does. (There's a freeware program that's supposed to make Acrobat load more quickly, but when I tried that my browser just froze.) I guess its main virtue is that it will duplicate print documents exactly, so it's good for things like printing out tax forms. But all the academic papers and such that use it just drive me nuts.

[tridim]

12. Like it for it's purpose, but hate the fact that it's GUI is non-standard

Specifically the crappy search function.

[Trillo]

13. I like it since version 6.

That's the first version that seems viewer friendly. Changing to various views can be done with one click. Prior to version 6, I preferred Glassbook Reader for onscreen viewing.

I still don't like the re-typing necessary when making a fair-use quote from a PDF where copying is disallowed.

Last night, I printed out a 40 page PDF and kept getting font errors (the letters kept showing up as little boxes on my trusty old LaserJet IIID), even though true-type fonts appeared to be embedded properly in the PDF. Finally, I got the document to print as "an image." (fortunately, I have expanded the memory on the printer so I can print a complete page as an high-resolution image)

So I like it, but Acrobat could still be improved, especially how it handles communicating with old printers.

After upgrading to Firefox, I had to get an updated version.

[pbg]

15. Solves the cross-platform problem

Design something on the Mac, client on a peecee can view it most times without a hitch.

Plus there's all sorts of little multimedia doodads you can take advantage of (custom page transitions, irises, wipes.)

[mosin]

17. Don't mind it

It has become a bit bloated, and the browser plug-in often crashes, but it's the most-widely accepted cross-platform, cross-version portable document program out there.

So, no, I don't hate Acrobat. In fact, I generally like Adobe products (e.g., Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, etc.).

[Bill McBlueState]

18. if Acrobat runs slowly....

I found this in the FAQ for Firefox. Haven't tried it yet.

Why do Adobe pdf files load slowly in Windows?

Adobe Reader 6.0 for Windows loads lots of unused plugins on startup. The Inquirer has a great article explaining how you can disable those unneeded plugins and make Adobe Reader load faster. Basically, you need to do the following:

1. Install Adobe Reader 6.0 and notice where it is installed.
2. Navigate to that folder in Explorer, locate the plug_ins subfolder and rename this folder to plug_ins_disabled.
3. Create a new plug_ins folder.
4. Move the files EWH32.api, printme.api and search.api from plug_ins_disabled to plug_ins.

[denverbill]

22. Interesting. Might have to give that a try.

Thanks.

[muriel_volestrangler]

26. I can't get the search function to work with the Acrobat Firefox plugin

and haven't yet found anything about it on the web. Has anyone else found this?

[NashVegas]

19. Mostly Hate It

I call PDFs on the web, 'info sharing for lazy and/or cheap people.' Kinda defeats the purpose of using html, etc. in the first place.

[kiahzero]

21. Not really

HTML was not designed for what people use it for. If you want a document to look exactly the same for everyone (especially forms and such), PDFs are vastly superior to HTML output.

Ever try and output a form for printing in HTML? I have - it wasn't fun.

[Nocturnes]

23. I use Xpdf

Rather than the adobe version. Open source, runs in Linux and seems to fire up substantially faster than the windows version (the actual one from Adobe).

[Book Lover]

24. There's a hard-boiled egg peeler?

I can see why endusers would have issues with PDFs, but in book publishing, there's no other. We only send PDFs to the printer, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

[Caution]

25. Hate it doesnt even begin to cover it.

I LOATHE it. I DESPISE it. Godawful piece of total crap software/format. YUCK.