does every new version of acrobat get worse?

[Crono]

OS X almost made me forget about how bad Acrobat Reader is/was...

It goes in the Windows Hall of Shame alongside RealPlayer

Okay, maybe it was never quite that bad.

 

[Doppel]

I think it does, though I've been using Foxit Reader for the past few years.

This my God this.

 

[Doppel]

It goes in the Windows Hall of Shame alongside RealPlayer

Okay, maybe it was never quite that bad.

Omf do you remember when real player was the preeminent way to watch videos online? That shit WAs worse than adobe reader.

 

[Crono]

Omf do you remember when real player was the preeminent way to watch videos online? That shit WAs worse than adobe reader.

Yeah, I remember that, it was qu-[BUFFERING 38%]

 

[Vic Vega]

...

 

[evident]

"Acrobat?" ...or do you mean "Adobe Reader?"

sorry. i meant adobe reader "x". and yes at my home machine i run pdf xchangeviewer. too bad with my work computer i cant do such things.

 

[Miramonti]

I love Foxit for reading, but for creating, Adobe has the best compression.

 

[edro]

It goes in the Windows Hall of Shame alongside RealPlayer

Okay, maybe it was never quite that bad.

And Winamp, when they went to version 3.0 and 5.0.
(2.x was the last good non-bloatware)

 

[PingSpike]

It's a victim of its own success. The added compatibility and security patches in each successive version made it more and more bloated.

I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't think acrobat was bloated and awful. I jumped ship to foxit a long time ago.

 

[Tsaico]

Yeah, I remember that, it was qu-[BUFFERING 38%]

Wow, I totally forgot about that.... I remember when I would avoid watching video just because it was linked to real player.

.... and WinAmp, because it really zips a lot of zazz... Then I found out it was, it really whips a llama's ass...

 

[DrPizza]

For 99.999% of users at work, all they need is Foxit reader. I showed this to the admin, demonstrated how it worked, did a side by side comparison with a large pdf that about strangled the PC when opening it up with acrobat. He apparently checked into any security problems - none to speak of. I won. We all now have foxit and firefox.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

For 99.999% of users at work, all they need is Foxit reader. I showed this to the admin, demonstrated how it worked, did a side by side comparison with a large pdf that about strangled the PC when opening it up with acrobat. He apparently checked into any security problems - none to speak of. I won. We all now have foxit and firefox.

Firefox is a huge pain in a real corporate environment. There's no way to push out updates, so it works great right now but is a mess after 2-3 years.

Foxit and the other pdf readers sound great right now, but wait until you deploy them to a bunch of people and then it secretly auto updates and starts displaying ads or worse.



I HATE adobe with a passion, it's not just acrobat but they also screw with the pdf standard which affects printers, phones, and all aspects of business. That being said, the free pdf solutions work great until the project is abandoned or sold.

 

[lxskllr]

Foxit and the other pdf readers sound great right now, but wait until you deploy them to a bunch of people and then it secretly auto updates and starts displaying ads or worse.



I HATE adobe with a passion, it's not just acrobat but they also screw with the pdf standard which affects printers, phones, and all aspects of business. That being said, the freeware pdf solutions work great until the project is abandoned or sold.

Fixed

That's why it's important to use libre software. It gives more control, and doesn't engage in underhanded tricks. Valuable projects seldom get abandoned, and if they do, you're free to pick them up.

 

[Jeff7]

Havent touched it in 10 years. Foxit preese.

This.


Though sometimes Foxit has trouble with some documents. My mom encountered an issue with the Postal Service's Click'n'Ship labels: The barcodes wouldn't render. They wouldn't show up in Foxit, and they wouldn't print.
She had to use Acrobat for it to work properly. And of course the tech support at the USPS isn't aware of the existence of other readers, so she was confused because they kept talking about "Adobe Acrobat" this and that, which wasn't what was on the screen. So I was the next one she called.


It kind of sucks that Foxit's gotten so huge though. The download is now 14MB, and the program folder is 34MB. I remember when Foxit Reader was a single executable file that could fit on a floppy disk.
On the plus side, it still loads a hell of a lot faster than Acrobat.

 

[lxskllr]

It kind of sucks that Foxit's gotten so huge though. The download is now 14MB, and the program folder is 34MB. I remember when Foxit Reader was a single executable file that could fit on a floppy disk.
On the plus side, it still loads a hell of a lot faster than Acrobat.

Sumatra is tiny. I use it as a portable reader. I don't have extensive experience, but it's worked for everything I've tried to open.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Foxit sucks. Its bloated freeware.

Sumatra is the best for pure reading, its literally nothing but a small PDF reader. It's perfect. I might have to find something that has PDF editing capabilities though, I miss those.

 

[darkewaffle]

I think Reader and Acrobat 9 aren't bad really, though newest I think is X at least.

I tried Foxit once a few years ago and it worked ok, but god did it ever look bad lol. Like if I hadn't known better I'd mistake it for malware.

 

[Gibson486]

Do not get me started. Every time I open a PDF, I cringe. Sometimes, it opens up, other times, it freezes, other times, it does this thing where it thinks it opened the file, but it really did nothing.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

If I didn't use Chrome already the built in pdf viewer would have been enough to get me to switch.

 

[Tsaico]

Firefox is a huge pain in a real corporate environment. There's no way to push out updates, so it works great right now but is a mess after 2-3 years.

Foxit and the other pdf readers sound great right now, but wait until you deploy them to a bunch of people and then it secretly auto updates and starts displaying ads or worse.



I HATE adobe with a passion, it's not just acrobat but they also screw with the pdf standard which affects printers, phones, and all aspects of business. That being said, the free pdf solutions work great until the project is abandoned or sold.

I have always used this, since 2008 and never had a problem making sure I had the correct version via GPO script and the MSI installer. Every once in a while might hit a snag, but I wouldn't call it a pain. This is in environments between 10 -45 Windows devices. the uninstall strings usually work well and do not require reboot, then just command line a silent install, no reboot required then either. End user doesn't even see it happening. It has been annoying though, since you need to register to get the MSI, and I hate having to register and have my spam go up. And I do agree, now that the program is significantly larger than it used to be, it takes longer to automate the above.

This is for the current version that I use in a logon script, but I think you get the idea...
to uninstall

C:\Program Files\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Uninstall.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Uninstall.exe MsiExec.exe /I{0C441730-85C7-4667-895B-6F7327D278EF} C:\Programme\Foxit Software\Foxit Reader\Uninstall.exe


Then to install:
\\server\NetworkShare\foxit.exe /d /disallow /ebay /foxitbar /dt

this does a silent install of my Foxit for all users, no ebay icon, no foxit bar and their default program with no icon on desktop.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

It only gets worse. Never better. Get used to it. Waiting for the day it's rendered useless.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Every version of Acrobat is worse than every version of Foxit

That said, I've NEVER been happy with acrobat. It's always performed like crap as far back as I can recall (early to mid 90s)

 

[Wyndru]

basically every adobe product has been insufferable to me for years. im baffled why they continue to have widespread adoption.

They don't have much competition, so their software has become sloppy bloatware over the years. Even CS4 was on 4 dvds and took hours to install.

Firefox is a huge pain in a real corporate environment. There's no way to push out updates, so it works great right now but is a mess after 2-3 years.

There are a lot of guides on how to deploy/update FF silently and remotely. We push out silent updates to FF and it's extensions on a regular basis (each release). We had to modify the process when FF4 came out because they changed a lot of the folder hierarchy at that point, but since then it's been the same. We have even managed to push out the layouts so it still looks like 3.6 because everyone was complaining about the tabs being on the top. There are a lot of addons to lock down FF too (password protect various menus).

 

[CraigRT]

I think it does, though I've been using Foxit Reader for the past few years.

Yeah, it launches in like 1/4 the time and also works every time.

Acrobat reader is an enormous POS.