Acrobat 8 UI

[Joe]

Okay, I've tried, I really have. All week I have not started Acrobat 7 and I've used Acrobat 8 for everything. It has not been a pleasant experience. Everything you click on you have to click twice. But not too fast or the 2nd one doesn't count. Need to click an icon on the toolbar. The first click will give the toolbar the focus. Then you have to pause. Then click again to actually click the tool you were going for. Got Separation Preview open and want to turn off a separation. Click it. Then pause. Then click it again to actually get it. Want to click the "Next Page" icon. Click...pause....click. Go back to seps preview. Click...pause...click...and on and on and on and on..................

Adobe...anyone home? This situation needs to be remedied. You can not get good production for actual prepress work. Beside the extra "click and waits" required everything is sluggish and jerky compared to Acrobat 7. It's too bad too. I like some of the features. I'm sure it's fine for the housewife that wants to browse an online catalog but it really sucks at trying to do real prepress work on it. Trying to switch from Separation preview to the various Pitstop tools, to preflight, to flattener preview and flip pages rapidly while doing it all is a complete exercise in frustration. And it should not have to wait until Acrobat 9 or beyond. This problem needs fixed NOW! Not that it will help but I thought I would try anyway.

Adobe people?

 

[gig0]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

Joe,

I always thought it was my logitech mouse because I've noticed a few other unusual things at the OS level, such as a window minimizing when hitting the 'X'. You wouldn't happen to be using a third party mouse?

I do feel your pain, though and it's very frustrating, especially in Acrobat 8.

 

[SlaveToTheMan]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

Acrobat is turning into a bloated POS, plain & simple. Adobe needs to split the application into a few versions, take all the crap out of the Printing Version & likewise for an Office Version and stop saddling us with garbage we'll never need or use. And yes, fix the damned functionality! If it's a known isue, why can't it be addressed in a patch?

Thanks Joe, got me all hot & bothered now!

 

[Joe]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

> {quote:title=SlaveToTheMan wrote:}{quote}
> Acrobat is turning into a bloated POS, plain & simple. Adobe needs to split the application into a few versions, take all the crap out of the Printing Version & likewise for an Office Version and stop saddling us with garbage we'll never need or use. And yes, fix the damned functionality! If it's a known isue, why can't it be addressed in a patch?
>
> Thanks Joe, got me all hot & bothered now!


You are welcome! LOL

I don't expect anyone from Adobe to come on here and agree it's a bloated POS but it would be nice if someone might say, "we see the shortcomings and are working on a solution". Look, a pink elephant just flew by.

gig0,

No, it's not a 3rd party mouse. It's the one that came with the G5. Not a mighty mouse but the older one button no scroll wheel kind.

 

[bluskool]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

I was just noticing something about this. A while back when we were talking about this, Leonard from Adobe piped in and said that it was due to a requirement by Apple, but that shouldn't really matter because, for some things, one click works.
For example: the separation preview window. Yeah, it doesn't have the focus, but it still remains in front of the doc and you can one click on the simulate black ink and paper color checkboxes, the ink manager, the "show certain color spaces menu" and you can select either separations or color warnings all without the window having focus, but you can't uncheck one of the color channels (like k to check for builds). If one click works for the others, then it should be able to work for the color channels. Also, when the separation preview window has the focus, this should not mean that you cannot scroll through the PDF document with your scroll wheel. Think about it, you can scroll through a Finder window even if it doesn't have the focus. Maybe I have a total misunderstanding o f how application windows work since I am not a programmer, but it just seems like if you can do it in Finder, you should be able to do it in Acrobat.

I do, however, have to say that you don't have to click on tools twice to select them. At least, I don't have to on my comp. Just one click selects the tool and brings the window into focus. Maybe it is a problem with Pitstop. Maybe if one of their windows has the focus, you have to click twice on an Acrobat tool. I don't know because I don't have Pitstop. After I downloaded the Pitstop demo, I could not find any useful thing that I could do with Pitstop that I couldn't already do with Acrobat except the color sliders. Those are cool, but I wasn't about to spend $600 for color sliders. That is not to say that it isn't useful for some people. I am just saying that, for my purposes, it seemed that Pistop just had a bunch of tools that Acrobat already had and there is no reason to bloat up the already large Acrobat 8.

 

[doubting_thomas]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

I don't run Pitstop in Acrobat 8 and I know exactly what Joe's talking about.
Running with dual monitors makes the problem even worse. It's not so much
the menu bar, but tool pallets seem to be affected by this, the Sep Preview
included. It's acts as though it's something wonkie between the Finder and
Acrobat. Oh, by the way, this isn't a problem on Windows XP.

 

[almaink]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

My 2¢ on this mess is, it's how things are cached in Acrobat. Do some work in any OSX Acrobat version, log out and back in, then check your trash. There is always Acrobat cached files in there. Flushing should take place when a file is saved, but not in Acrobat or so it seems.

 

[jbbbarr]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

I thought it was just my computer at the house, but if you look at the attached pic of my install of 7 and 8 side by side, they both have pitstop installed, but 8 is approx. 250% larger than 7. This does not affect me on a fast 8 core, but on my mini with 2gb ram I can see the lag as described. So it has been filled up with an obvious bunch of nonsense to appeal more toward general usage.

 

[bluskool]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

No, I know it lags. That is def a problem. I was just saying that, at least on my comp, I don't have to click twice. When another window has the focus, I can still move my mouse over a tool and it will bevel and change color. I did not say that it is fast by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't have to click on the toolbar first and then click on the tool I want when the window is not in focus. I don't, however, keep my toolbar floating, but I pulled it off just to test and I still don't have to click twice. I have noticed to an extent that you can actually just move faster than Acrobat and trust that it will eventually catch up. I was combining single pages of an issue into one PDF for our archive the other day and I noticed that I could, while the pages were combining, click on save (even though it is grayed out), type in the document name, hit enter and then hit "command + w" to close the window all while Acrobat was still combining the pages.
I have dual monitors as well and your right, that certainly slows things up a bit.

Lets do a poll:

Does everyone else here have to click twice to select a tool?




Dan R.

 

[Joe]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

The toolbar is iffy and the least important. Sometimes I have to click twice and sometimes I don't.

But that darn separation preview window is the bane of my existence right now. You do have to click twice to turn a sep on if sep preview is not the active window. If sep preview has the focus you cannot move to the next page with the arrow key on the keyboard. You have to click the gray background surrounding the page, which by the way the mouse is invisible in that area and that sucks too, in order to let the arrow keys on the keyboard move you to the next page.

My old working pattern was to open the sep preview window, move it over to the right so the checkboxes were just visible and then I could click the black sep to turn it off/on and without moving my mouse I could move to the next page by hitting the arrow button on the keyboard, click the black sep off/on, move to the next page, etc... A very fast and efficient method for moving through many pages in a very short amount of time. Adobe has screwed the goose on that one though.

 

[Joe]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

And while I'm at it. Why does every freaking PDF you open have to have it's own toolbar? If I open 12 PDF's I get 12 toolbars. That a huge waste of system resources. I know hard drives and ram are dirt cheap but that's just poor planning and development. What was wrong with one toolbar anchored below the menu like in Acrobat 7? If it ain't broke...leave it alone.

 

[bluskool]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

Yeah, you are right Joe. The sep preview is f*ck*n annoying. That is what I was saying. If Finder can allow you to scroll one window while another one has the focus, then why can't Acrobat. How, as Adobe has said, is this an Apple requirement when the Finder doesn't adhere to this requirement. Maybe because of the broader, PC-based market that Adobe is going after with PDF, the Mac version is not getting as much attention as it once was. I guess now we have to wait for someone else to come along and create a better product for print people just like Adobe did to Quark with InDesign after Quark said Mac was dead.


btw, Neo doesn't count because it is ridiculously and shamelessly overpriced.

Dan R.

 

[bluskool]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

Had to come back to this one. I was just working in Quark 6 and discovered that if you have two windows open at the same time, you can scroll through either one no matter which window has the focus. So, come on Adobe. Give us scrolling while the sep preview window has the focus.

Dan R.

 

[apepp]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

...yes, the daily grind through acrobat 8 is tiring at times, though i do think the render time is better than 6 or 7, a lot less of that:

render >>> render >>> render >>> render >>> got to the bottom, finds another layer >>> render >>> render >>> render >>> oh, found another layer >>> render >>> render >>> render...

...sod it, pdf is fine i reckon...

...I made it!! >>> ...force quit the bloody thing...

: )

 

[prepressguru]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

Yeah software these days is like selling the "new" version of Tide. Each year they label something is new in Tide so you will buy it. Just like software they make some interface changes and label it new and improved....?? Can you imagine if they did the same thing to mechanics sets of tools?

The software industry needs to get back to basics like they use to be about inferface design and effiiciency. How many times has the interface changed in Arcobat. It's nuts?!!

The industry needs a set of standards to live up to, which promto quailty and with limited bugs. CS3 has lots of issues which may never be fixed and already they are touting CS4. Again imagine a socket wrench which when using a 3/8 ths socket will only only work when un tighting but not tightening and all other sockets work perfectly well, and this happends to be the socket you use most.

Good luck!

 

[leonardr]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

Then you'll love Acrobat 9 - we did NOT change the UI this time around!

Leonard Rosenthol
Adobe Systems

 

[Joe]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

> {quote:title=leonardr wrote:}{quote}
> Then you'll love Acrobat 9 - we did NOT change the UI this time around!
>
> Leonard Rosenthol
> Adobe Systems


Great! The one time it could use an overhaul you didn't change it.

 

[almaink]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

I thought Adobe has a non-discloser on all their pending applications? Can we talk about 9 now?

 

[leonardr]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

I can talk about - I work for Adobe .

However, Adobe told all beta testers that they are welcome to discuss ANY FEATURE of the product that has already been mentioned publicly by Adobe.

So yes, I don't see any reason why you can't tell others here on this forum about your favorite features of the new product! I'm writing about many of them in my blog (http://acrobatusers.com/blogs/leonardr).

Leonard

 

[almaink]

Re: Acrobat 8 UI

I'll say this much then about the beta. I thought I'd give it the ultimate test by installing 9 on my Old G4 DP 800 running Tiger. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the speed it launched and operated. I've edited files that brought versions 6, 7, and 8 to it's knees with no hint of lag or spinning wheel of death. It's yet to crash and I for one can't wait for it's final release. I think Adobe finally has Acrobat running as it should.