It's bittersweet to read this as it has been bothering me (and low key driving me crazy) for the last year or two or however long it's been that the 2nd tool "went missing".
I kept asking myself, "Wtf, where is the freekin second row? I know there was a second row before but now it's not there! Where could it be? Am I going nuts?" and now that I know it's been removed, the good news is, I'm not going crazy, yet.
The bad news, is that now I know for certain that there is no possible way to enable it or bring it back and that actually infuriates me to some degree. Because, it makes me wonder, whose idea was it to think that squishing all the tools together into one row and then hiding the rest behind a 3-dotted drop down menu would be a great idea?
I mean, who in their right mind thought that the increased efficiency was less valuable than having a "cleaner and tidier workspace" or a more "aesthetic look" and chose looks over work productivity? Was Adobe Reader meant for reading PDF containing small text at the far edges of a page that zooming out to expose more of a page was not an option?? Was READ MODE not invented for people who wanted more "screen real estate"? And, if a mode was created previously to serve those individuals' needs, why isn't there a PRODUCTIVITY MODE that re-enables the second bar, heck, why not give it the option of a third bar if we can make an additional productivity mode aside from just "reading mode" and "full screen mode". It's like one day, we're going to open Acrobat reader and see no tools at all, in favor of keeping things simple and aesthetically pleasing at the cost of productivity.
[Caution, incoming rant, skip for irrelevance or continue for indulgence]
That means, people thought the"benefit" of gaining maybe a centimeter of additional "document reading space" had a far greater value than being able to achieve a change of tools, view mode, or other document function with a SINGLE-CLICK and was willing to sacrifice the compounding number of milleseconds, if not seconds, worth of of their time, to replace it with what is now wasted, double-cursor-movement by needing to click not once, but twice, to display the drop down menu, and then to find and select the view or tool desired?
Imagine 1 second of your productive life sacrificed every time you had to wanted to do something that wasn't readily avialable on the single-row toolbar, like change views, change page, zoom in, zoom out, change back and forth from one page to two page views, , switch to the selection tool, switch to the hand tool, or whatever other tools that could be placed on the toolbar, just so that your reader could have a "slimmer" look. Imagine a life where you sacrificed the improved efficiency gained as a benefit of accurate muscle memory movement that once allowed you to immediately flick your mouse and swiftly change to the appropriate view or tool you needed and continue your work.
But nay, they said. They said, "We don't using reading mode because we only use zoom anyways so we don't need two bars of tools, please just make it one" and "...my laptop doesn't have portrait mode so I need every centimeter of reading space I can afford because I don't know how to change the number of lines that a will page scroll when I hit Page Down" or something. And for those who use the reading for reading and working on pdf files.
"But nay," they said. They believed more would agree with the idea that if they couldn't zoom out to fit whatever they were looking at that happened to be at both the top and bottom of the page at the same time, that adding an extra centimeter would ease their troubles be more beneficial to the common good than provide a means for users to save precious milleseconds of their life!
Nay, they said, to a future that required having to scroll down one more line to read the next portion of the page that didn't fit or scroll up to see that title and header fit within the same view of their first paragraph.
Nay, someone out there wanted one extra centimeter of space and was willing to give up what could add up to hours of their life on this earth, so that they could just "see a little more" all at once.
Seriously, how small of a monitor were they working on, were they still working on 800x600 resolution where it accounted for maybe 1.5 centimeters?! I mean, isn't that the purpose of READ MODE, to eliminate all the surrounding extra unnecessary toolbars for when you want that extra space? They couldn't add a tablet mode for small readers who might slightly benefit more from the extra one bar removed. Why?
But I digress.
[End rant]
While I agree with @TimReddyOrNot on the point of feedback not making any difference, I went to the link provided and read this hopefully not-so-false-hope-endearing statement saying, "...We do, however, read each and every message. We use the information to improve our products and services. Your comments, suggestions, and ideas for improvements are very important to us. We appreciate you taking the time to send us this information."
So, I'm going to submit my feedback, and I'm going to share my frustration, the number of minutes I've lost over the years due to the inability to adjust to the new "more sleek and simplistic" design of AdoBeSlower Acrobat Reader, as well as the unncessary time spent composing this dialectic contemplating the speculated jusutifications that would lead to such a drastic product UI change presumably considered an "improvement". But, in doing so, it is my hope that I'm not alone, and some others out there, will feel compelled to submit their feedback, so that Adobe will bring back the option of a second row toolbar.
Thank you for reading.
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