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Acrobat Pro not showing dialog boxes, effectively freezing the program

New Here ,
Jan 25, 2025 Jan 25, 2025

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When I tried to print a PDF file from Acrobat Pro on my MacBook Air using an Apple Pro display running Sequoia 15.1.1 today, the top menu went grey and Acrobat became effectively non-responsive. That is, all that Acrobat would do when I clicked on the main screen is that Acrobat would beep as if I was ignoring a dialog box. Exploring further, I found the same thing happening every time I would try to print or do something in Acrobat that, I'm guessing, might bring up a dialog box. For example, trying to open the preferences box. The only way I could find to get out of this was to force quit the program. After chasing this problem for quite a while, I noticed that the dialog box was opening on my laptop display instead of the Pro Display I was running the program from. I have my laptop sitting to the side and barely use the screen.

 

My question is what the heck. Why does Adobe open modal dialog boxes on a different display (screen) than the user is using for the program? Why not put it on top of the window you are interacting with as the Apple standard seems specify. Why would a preferences box be modal? Who does that? While I'm at it, why doesn't Adobe use tools that are up to date with Apple standards that have been around for years. It's diabolical. 

 

I am posting this also in case somebody else has this problem in the hope that they will somehow possibly come across this and save themselves the trouble of figuring out this Adobe Acrobat quirk on their own.

TOPICS
Crash or freeze , General troubleshooting , Modern Acrobat , Print and prepress , Standards and accessibility

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Community Expert ,
Jan 27, 2025 Jan 27, 2025

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Hi, @Michael3077892594ri ,

afaik it is possible to define a main screen in a multi monitor environment.

What monitor is defined as the main monitor?

If it is not the Apple Pro display than you try to define that monitor as the main monitor.

Regards

Stephan

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New Here ,
Jan 27, 2025 Jan 27, 2025

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Yes. The developer’s job is extra complicated issue as in addition to many displays, modern display systems have virtual displays that let you virtually configure multiple screens that the user can switch between. Fortunately, many of these perhaps seemingly open questions have been addressed quite well over the past three or four decades as these ideas of multiple displays and virtual machines are not new at all. “Problems” like this existed in X back in the 90s. It’s truly been worked.

Most modern user interfaces I’ve coded on and work with keep track of or have some idea of the main window being displayed at a given time.
Keeping with the principal that user interactions should cause effects within the current view of the user, my observation is that most programs confine new windows to the currently active window or the screen that the window is in. They then rely upon the operating system to let the user move windows to different screens and displays. Additionally, dialog boxes are seen as a particular problem. Even at the introductory level, most coding and design texts I’ve read in the past 30 years treat dialog boxes as a special problem. They should be avoided whenever possible and treated extra carefully when implemented… Like making sure that they appear in a logical place.

That is why it is so surprising to use programs, like Acrobat, which seemingly haven’t addressed 30 year old learned lessons.

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