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At some point, they have to restructure the preferences. It's getting just a little ridiculous. I mean seriously, when the simplest settings pane has 2 drop-down lists and 4 checkboxes, and there are thirty-three separate panes, you need a redesign. For example, why does 2D and 3D measuring need 2 separate panes. Multimedia and Multimedia trust? It's bad enough that switching preference panes pushes my MacBook Pro into beach-balling for a couple seconds. All I'm doing is changing preference panes, not rebuilding my font cache.

On and on. Yes, yes, I know, Windows compatibility, but that's a false god. Being compatible and marching lockstep in precisely the same UI are not the same. The Acrobat 8 preferences UI is blindly following the god of "More is better" writ large with no real nod to making things easy to understand or use.

How come, in this day and age of XML, I can't directly import XML into Acrobat? What's the deal here? I could come up with some rather cynical reasons, but really, I don't care what Adobe's justification is. XML data is as much a common business language as PDF, and not allowing Acrobat to just import it is dumb. It would allow third parties to more easily integrate with Acrobat. You'd think that would be a good thing, especially if it let someone write a decent Office -> Acrobat plugin on the Mac, since the chances of Adobe doing that approach that of a Phelps/RuPaul duet of "I love being a Girl". The really funny part is, I can export PDF as XML. Acrobat uses XML for the Extensible Metadata Platform, XMP. (Yes, I did in fact hit the online help to see if the UI was perhaps lying to me. Nope, nothing about directly importing XML. If it's there, it's so well hidden that it's not there anymore. Either option is dumb.)

Speaking of online help, why do I need a separate help viewer application? HELLO! OS SERVICES!

On the positive side, Acrobat no longer eats my entire monitor when I open a PDF in it. That only took 3 versions, but I'll take it. It opens a lot faster than version 7, but that's not saying much. Instead, I'll say it opens pretty quickly on my MacBook Pro, other versions not withstanding.

The UI has changed a lot, and it's kind of meh, skewing towards it's a new version, let's change stuff. It's more cartoony than it used to be. The toolbars can no longer be docked anywhere but in the window. This sucks, since I like to do a lot of my Acrobat work with the document on one monitor, and the toolbars docked on the other under the menubar. But then I remember the Acrobat team's primary OS and one true love, and it makes sense. (If you view Acrobat as a Windows application first, then a lot of the UI oddities make sense.) However, this leads to situations where I can hide the window and its docked toolbars under toolbars that aren't a part of the window. Mmm...UI goodness for all. Again, this situation really won't happen in Windows where most users run all windows maximized, (yes, they do. It was a rather important bit of justification for the Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon.) but on a Mac, it's going to be damned annoying. Oh, unless you dock your toolbars in a window, you can't dock them to each other either. Thanks Acrobat team, because everyone on a Mac works just like they do in Windows. Sheesh.

On the plus side, I can finally customize my toolbars in one place. However, you can't even approach the level of customization that you get with Office 2004, and when I click on the "master" checkbox for a toolbar, like the Page Navigation Toolbar, I don't select all of the options for that, I get what Adobe has decided I get. To select everything, I have to do it manually. This is pretty much the opposite of how this should work, but hey, Adobe knows best. Oh, and if you have the "More Tools" dialog open, the existing floating toolbars float on top of everything, including windows from other applications. Nice touch, especially when I can't move them without dismissing the More Tools window. Of course, when an option called "Customize Toolbars" creates a Window called "More Tools", intuitiveness is taking it in the shorts anyway, so why should functionality be any different. Just because there are two separate models for handling toolbars that work really well, (Apple's and Microsoft's), why should Adobe use either? Just because people are used to them? Pish-Tosh, this is Acrobat, you do things their way. Oh, even better, some toolbars select everything, some don't. Here's a fun variant. By default, the Print Production Toolbar has no options enabled. Say you only want to enable one. Logic dictates that you'd click on that one item, say "PDF Optimizer...". Silly logic, this is Acrobat. No matter where you click in the Print Production Toolbar settings, the first click enables all the items. (Or sometimes I get what I had previously selected. Who knows what the hell will happen in this dialog. Is there any consistency at all to this idiocy, or was the Jack Daniels' flowing freely in that meeting? I really shouldn't be reminded of Carlin's "meatcake" bit when using a computer program.) How do you get to just the one you wanted? Yeah. You manually deselect the other ten. Nice job guys. Wait, wait, there's more! (yeah, I know, beating a puppy, but it's just too easy.) So let's pretend that we only selected the one item in the Print Production Toolbar. What is the name of that toolbar when you're done? "Print", with the right part of the "t" cut off. No, really, look:

See? I can't make this stuff up. This is really some of the worst toolbar UI I have ever seen in my life, and that's including Windows and OS/2 applications. Oh holy crap! I selected the option that said "Menu Bar". How do I get my menu bar back? Well, that's via the very intuitive "Shift-Command-M" keystroke. Far more intuitive than oh, reacting to the mouse being held against the top of the main monitor for a second or so and just popping it down. Nope. Away it goes, and away it shall stay until, (from the Acrobat help viewer):

Ordinarily, it’s a good idea to keep the Acrobat menus visible so that they are available as you work. It is possible to hide them, using the View > Menu Bar command. However, the only way to display and use them again is by pressing F9 (Windows) or Shift+Command+M (Mac OS).

Yeah. That's great. A great way to freak people out. Freaking people out is not a good UI principle. Unless you're Adobe.

God, I have to stop, it's too depressing for one session.

Okay, I know I said I'd stop, but this one's important

Just so all the support people know: The Safari plugin, (No, it's not a browser plugin, it's a Safari plugin. It only works in Safari, ergo, not a browser plugin. included with Acrobat Pro 8 is a new version from the Acrobat Reader plugin. Of course, there's no Acrobat Reader 8. So, that means that if someone's having a problem with PDFs in Safari, you now get to ask them "Which version of the plugin are you using?" because the UI between the two versions is as different as the UI between Acrobat 7 and 8.

Thanks a pantload Adobe.

Technorati Tags: Acrobat, Adobe, Adobe Applications, Bad UI

Comments

At some point, they have to restructure the preferences. It's getting just a little ridiculous. I mean seriously, when the simplest settings pane has 2 drop-down lists and 4 checkboxes, and there are thirty-three separate panes, you need a redesign. For example, why does 2D and 3D measuring need 2 separate panes. Multimedia and Multimedia trust? It's bad enough that switching preference panes pushes my MacBook Pro into beach-balling for a couple seconds. All I'm doing is changing preference panes, not rebuilding my font cache.\n\nOn and on. Yes, yes, I know, Windows compatibility, but that's a false god. Being compatible and marching lockstep in precisely the same UI are not the same. The Acrobat 8 preferences UI is blindly following the god of \"More is better\" writ large with no real nod to making things easy to understand or use.\n\nHow come, in this day and age of XML, I can't directly import XML into Acrobat? What's the deal here? I could come up with some rather cynical reasons, but really, I don't care what Adobe's justification is. XML data is as much a common business language as PDF, and not allowing Acrobat to just import it is dumb. It would allow third parties to more easily integrate with Acrobat. You'd think that would be a good thing, especially if it let someone write a decent Office -> Acrobat plugin on the Mac, since the chances of Adobe doing that approach that of a Phelps/RuPaul duet of \"I love being a Girl\". The really funny part is, I can export PDF as XML. Acrobat uses XML for the Extensible Metadata Platform, XMP. (Yes, I did in fact hit the online help to see if the UI was perhaps lying to me. Nope, nothing about directly importing XML. If it's there, it's so well hidden that it's not there anymore. Either option is dumb.)\n\nSpeaking of online help, why do I need a separate help viewer application? HELLO! OS SERVICES!\n\nOn the positive side, Acrobat no longer eats my entire monitor when I open a PDF in it. That only took 3 versions, but I'll take it. It opens a lot faster than version 7, but that's not saying much. Instead, I'll say it opens pretty quickly on my MacBook Pro, other versions not withstanding.\n\nThe UI has changed a lot, and it's kind of meh, skewing towards it's a new version, let's change stuff. It's more cartoony than it used to be. The toolbars can no longer be docked anywhere but in the window. This sucks, since I like to do a lot of my Acrobat work with the document on one monitor, and the toolbars docked on the other under the menubar. But then I remember the Acrobat team's primary OS and one true love, and it makes sense. (If you view Acrobat as a Windows application first, then a lot of the UI oddities make sense.) However, this leads to situations where I can hide the window and its docked toolbars under toolbars that aren't a part of the window. Mmm...UI goodness for all. Again, this situation really won't happen in Windows where most users run all windows maximized, (yes, they do. It was a rather important bit of justification for the Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon.) but on a Mac, it's going to be damned annoying. Oh, unless you dock your toolbars in a window, you can't dock them to each other either. Thanks Acrobat team, because everyone on a Mac works just like they do in Windows. Sheesh.\n\nOn the plus side, I can finally customize my toolbars in one place. However, you can't even approach the level of customization that you get with Office 2004, and when I click on the \"master\" checkbox for a toolbar, like the Page Navigation Toolbar, I don't select all of the options for that, I get what Adobe has decided I get. To select everything, I have to do it manually. This is pretty much the opposite of how this should work, but hey, Adobe knows best. Oh, and if you have the \"More Tools\" dialog open, the existing floating toolbars float on top of everything, including windows from other applications. Nice touch, especially when I can't move them without dismissing the More Tools window. Of course, when an option called \"Customize Toolbars\" creates a Window called \"More Tools\", intuitiveness is taking it in the shorts anyway, so why should functionality be any different. Just because there are two separate models for handling toolbars that work really well, (Apple's and Microsoft's), why should Adobe use either? Just because people are used to them? Pish-Tosh, this is Acrobat, you do things their way. Oh, even better, some toolbars select everything, some don't. Here's a fun variant. By default, the Print Production Toolbar has no options enabled. Say you only want to enable one. Logic dictates that you'd click on that one item, say \"PDF Optimizer...\". Silly logic, this is Acrobat. No matter where you click in the Print Production Toolbar settings, the first click enables all the items. (Or sometimes I get what I had previously selected. Who knows what the hell will happen in this dialog. Is there any consistency at all to this idiocy, or was the Jack Daniels' flowing freely in that meeting? I really shouldn't be reminded of Carlin's \"meatcake\" bit when using a computer program.) How do you get to just the one you wanted? Yeah. You manually deselect the other ten. Nice job guys. Wait, wait, there's more! (yeah, I know, beating a puppy, but it's just too easy.) So let's pretend that we only selected the one item in the Print Production Toolbar. What is the name of that toolbar when you're done? \"Print\", with the right part of the \"t\" cut off. No, really, look:\n\n\n\n\n\nSee? I can't make this stuff up. This is really some of the worst toolbar UI I have ever seen in my life, and that's including Windows and OS/2 applications. Oh holy crap! I selected the option that said \"Menu Bar\". How do I get my menu bar back? Well, that's via the very intuitive \"Shift-Command-M\" keystroke. Far more intuitive than oh, reacting to the mouse being held against the top of the main monitor for a second or so and just popping it down. Nope. Away it goes, and away it shall stay until, (from the Acrobat help viewer):\n\n

Ordinarily, it’s a good idea to keep the Acrobat menus visible so that they are available as you work. It is possible to hide them, using the View > Menu Bar command. However, the only way to display and use them again is by pressing F9 (Windows) or Shift+Command+M (Mac OS).

\n\nYeah. That's great. A great way to freak people out. Freaking people out is not a good UI principle. Unless you're Adobe.\n\nGod, I have to stop, it's too depressing for one session. \n\nOkay, I know I said I'd stop, but this one's important\n\nJust so all the support people know: The Safari plugin, (No, it's not a browser plugin, it's a Safari plugin. It only works in Safari, ergo, not a browser plugin. included with Acrobat Pro 8 is a new version from the Acrobat Reader plugin. Of course, there's no Acrobat Reader 8. So, that means that if someone's having a problem with PDFs in Safari, you now get to ask them \"Which version of the plugin are you using?\" because the UI between the two versions is as different as the UI between Acrobat 7 and 8.\n\nThanks a pantload Adobe.\n\n\n

Technorati Tags: Acrobat, Adobe, Adobe Applications, Bad UI