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Why change everything?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
June 22, 2023
91 replies
218848 views

Why? Why do you "creators" feel a need to completely change the layout of toolbars, etc. in a program?! Do you have nothing to do so you just search out what you can do to aggravate us? Adobe Acrobat DC is now TOTALLY different in the toolbar layouts! WHY???

Modern Acrobat

Correct answer Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Was this even tested before it was released to the public?
By @DCProud 202

Adobe has pre-release testers for all the Creative Suite programs and Acrobat. Occassionally I see Adobe announce for people to join the testing program.

Many of us community experts here in the forums are testers for Adobe, and many of us have been doing this since the 1980s and 1990s.

I can't recall much positive feedback from the testers before the "modern" Acrobat was released to the public. I know my comments back to the engineers were fairly extensive. Some things were improved (darkening the icons from a light gray to a dark gray, for example). But for the most part, the comments have fallen on deaf ears.

Over the past 18 months, I personally have continued to use and test the newest beta releases, but I often have to abandon them and switch to another computer that runs the "classic" interface. I have only so much time to donate to Adobe to dignose problems (and provide detailed bug reports and comments to the engineers). I, like most folks here, have a job to do. Working for free for Adobe is not on my to-do list.

3 suggestions:

Disable the new Acrobat and revert back to the "classic" interface. I believe that all of the old functionality is still active there.
Join the Acrobat beta testing group. I don't know where to direct you to join, but try searching for a public page in the Acrobat section of Adobe's website.
Consider another brand of PDF editing software. The PDF file format was placed into the public domain about 15 years ago and since then, other companies have developed competing programs. Wikipedia has a decent list of other brands. One of our favorites is ABBY Fine Reader/PDF.

But note that none of these competing programs have all the features of Acrobat, so if you're in certain industries, you're really stuck with Adobe Acrobat. These industry-specific features include:

Accessible PDFs and documents
PDF forms
Printing, graphic arts, and preflighting for print
Security
Digital signatures
Automated PDF documents (aka, stuff like bank statements created from a database a on grand scale)

So see if any other alternative brand gets the job done for you. Be careful of the company's country of origin: you might not be able to install software from certain countries, which is the case here in the US for government computers. Example: FoxIt is a Chinese company and usually is not allowed on our government clients' computers.

As always, don't forget to voice your comments on UserVoice and click the button to VOTE. That is the only place where Adobe takes notice of customers.

Let Adobe know:

You can voice your opinion about the new interface at UserVoice: https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/47082691-ditch-t...

Be sure to leave a comment about your experience with the new interface. They need to hear from users. And don't forget to click the VOTE button.

FYI, UserVoice is Adobe's official website where it reads and takes into account suggestions and complaints from users of its various products. On the other hand, this community forum is a user-to-user help forum.

Show previous replies

Frans v.d. Geest

Braniac

The 'old' interface could use some 'freshen up', but leave things in place. A bit more 'modern look' is fine, but on the UI as we all know...

D

dswallow

New Participant

These updates are absolutely apalling. Nothing improves. Everything gets slower and slower, and once you figure out where some options has moved, they move it again. I'd fire most everyone responsioble for constantly revising the UI and hire some folks who are capable of understanding how to optimize and improve performance.

C

ccdrknrgy

New Participant

[abuse removed] This is the worst new version I have seen since the latest version of Excel, where now you can't anything anywhere to do anything helpful. Every version for every basic software has turned into complete garbage. I can't for the life of me figure out why people need to keep changing a good app to the point where it is unrecognizable and unusuable. Congratulations on a complete waste of money, time, and space. Someone needs to be fired big time for (removed).

kglad

Braniac

@ccdrknrgy

you could restore the interface.

N

noggin nocker

New Participant

i agrre. the new lay out is horrendous. leave things alone

kglad

Braniac

@noggin nocker

restore to the traditional.

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Braniac

Remember to vote and comment in UserVoice because Adobe's engineers don't hang out in this user forum. Tell them why you don't like it, too.

VOTE HERE: https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/47082691-ditch-t...

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com

Braniac

Tell the Acrobat engineers and marketing department to ditch this new "Modern" Acrobat interface. It doesn't work.

VOTE HERE: https://acrobat.uservoice.com/forums/590923-acrobat-for-windows-and-mac/suggestions/47082691-ditch-the-2023-user-interface-in-acrobat

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |

A

AngelaAmica

New Participant

I am feeling inches away from not abiding by the guidelines, as I am livid having WASTED, nearly an hour trying to figure out where the tools I have used regularly in Adobe Acrobat Pro on my Macbook Pro, customized set up -- where have they gone and why I cannot seem to re-set as before? Why would Adobe Acrobat team do such a maddening thing???!!! I still have to spend time to figure out how to get the tools I used accessible to me!! I try to get the tools I want but it will not allow me to, as it indicates that the tools I need to do MY JOB are somewhere in the program ---grayed out!! Not based on what Acrobat thinks I may want. UGH!!!!

G

Gwen31584783596p

New Participant

I'm so thankful you asked the correct question or I finally searched the right topic. I've been going nuts trying to figure out why I could not print a pdf Portfolio and where did my toolbars go, why the menu bar items start showing up on the right when it's always been on the left. Not cool! I'm so thankful for the person to provided a solution to the nightmare. Thank you @reginal79098089 and @jane-e

jane-e

Braniac

You're welcome @Gwen31584783596p !

Jane

L

Louise in the Midwest

New Participant

I couldn't agree more! I have never understood why the changes developers make happen when it seems there's no improvement and often takes a step backward. Making changes just for the sake of making a change with no real legitimate reason is the worst thing developers do.

An additional major problem with this new release is there's no option to open PDF documents independently. I HATE opening multiple documents within the app.

That said, I at least tried to give this new view a chance. I would continue to give it a chance, but not being able to open PDF files independently is why I'm changing back.

jane-e

Braniac

An additional major problem with this new release is there's no option to open PDF documents independently. I HATE opening multiple documents within the app.
By @Louise in the Midwest

By now I'm sure you've disabled the "New Experience" following the instructions in the second reply in this thread.

Can you clarify your second issue?

What are the steps you are using to open PDFs "independently"?
How did it work before and how does it work now?
Are you on macOS or Windows?
What is your version (exact) of Acrobat?

Jane

L

Louise in the Midwest

New Participant

Yes, I have changed back, but I'll clarify.

In the previous version, you could go to Edit>Preferences>General and, under Basic Tools, uncheck the option "Open documents as new tabs in the same window (requires relaunch)". This prevents PDF files from opening in the same Acrobat window as tabs. It's annoying that it's not available in the new version. That option alone would have me trying out the new version longer than just a couple days.

JR Boulay

Braniac

The most notable innovation is the inversion between navigation panels and tool panels, and an impressive number of extra clicks to do the same task.
I guess it took a lot of brainstorming to come up with this result!

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

Nancy OShea

Braniac

Change is hard. But time marches on & nothing stays the same. Welcome to progress. 😁

If Adobe didn't innovate and make product improvements, you'd be just as unhappy but for other reasons. 🤔 🤔

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator

try67

Braniac

There's change for the purpose of updating an application's functionality or ease-of-use and there's change for change's sake. I consider the latest changes to the Acrobat/Reader UI to be the latter, since they didn't add anything new to the application in terms of functionality, nor did they make it easier for users to access tools.

In fact, they did exactly the opposite. By swapping the locations of the Tools and Pages/Bookmarks/etc. panels and hiding the menu bar they caused a great deal of confusion for many users, and even broke the functionality of custom-made tools created for the application. Not to mention made many of the tutorials created for the application in the past obsolete, just because the tools needed are no longer in the same locations.

In short, I suspect it was only done because companies like to give their users the feeling they're getting their money's worth when they pay a subscription, and if nothing changes it's as if you're paying for the same old thing over and over again. In fact, people pay for an application like Acrobat for it be usable to them, not for it to be "pretty", so I think this was a huge miscalculation and mistake on Adobe's part.

Nancy OShea

Braniac

@try67,

From our limited vantage point as product users, we don't always see the bigger picture.

Speaking as a web developer, I sometimes have to move furniture before I deploy new construction.

Nancy O'Shea— Product User, Community Expert & Moderator

jane-e

Braniac

@reginal79098089 wrote on 22 June:

Adobe Acrobat DC is now TOTALLY different in the toolbar layouts!

Hi Reginal,

I have yet to hear from someone who likes the "new experience" in Acrobat, but it is easy to turn off!

Steps to enable [and disable] the new experience

To enable the new experience, go to View > Enable new Acrobat and click Restart.
To disable the new experience,
- Windows: Click the hamburger menu ( 3 lines ) at the upper left corner and choose Disable new Acrobat.
- macOS: Go to View > Disable new Acrobat.

Details about the New Experience here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/new-acrobat-experience.html

Does this help?

Jane