The New Adobe Acrobat User Interface - Let's See If They Listen
FULLY SUPPORTING OUR PRODUCTS
At www.pdfautomationstation.com we've been developing custom automation solutions for Acrobat Pro and Reader since 2004, and we fully support all our products. I personally provide one-on-one support by email, phone, and remote, when necessary. Occasionally I receive support emails with statements like:
"I don't see any of the things from your instructions."
"I can't see anything you show in your video."
When this happened, it was almost always one of the following:
- They had a PDF open in a web browser instead of locally in Acrobat Pro.
- They were using a non-Adobe PDF viewer/editor.
- They opened a PDF with Reader instead of Acrobat Pro.
DISASTER AVERTED
A few months ago, I received one of those panicked emails. After a few exchanges got us nowhere I picked up the phone and called the frustrated customer. "Do you see the menu on the top left of your screen, File, Edit, View…?", I asked. "No," was the reply. Time to remote in.
"What program is this?", I asked, "I've never seen this before."
"It's Adobe Acrobat Pro. I just installed it," he replied.
My first thought was that he had been scammed into purchasing a counterfeit version of Adobe Acrobat Pro. Sure enough, there was no File, Edit, View, Help menu at the top. Nothing looked familiar. It looked like he was in a web browser, not a local software program. The keystroke shortcut to open the JavaScript console, Ctrl + j, did nothing. I thought to myself "If this is the new version of Acrobat Pro, I don't want any part of it." As I was hovering and clicking, I noticed this submenu item:
Disable new Acrobat
"Do you mind if I click that?" I asked. "Not at all" my frustrated customer replied. Bingo! "Acrobat will restart". In less than one minute we were back in business with the real Acrobat Pro. I accidentally learned the solution to an issue that is occurring more and more frequently, and I can now quickly get customers up to speed.
THE PERILS OF SUBSCRIPTION SOFTWARE
I have used Acrobat Pro almost daily since version 6.0, have purchased every update since, and been a subscriber of Acrobat Pro since Adobe joined many other software companies in securing their revenue stream by switching to subscription based. My subscription price has never increased so I assumed my price was locked. I recently received an email notification from Adobe stating that my subscription fee would be increasing by 25% (My calculation. They didn't express the price increase as a percentage for obvious reasons). It must be nice (I generally hate that expression but, in this case, I don't have a replacement) to flick a switch and increase your multi-billion- dollar revenue by 25%, knowing that most of your customers won't really have a choice whether to bite the bullet or not.
I was actually OK with it this time, since the cost of everything is through the roof, they have never increased my price in at least five years, the tool is invaluable to my business, and the subscription fee will still be one of my smallest monthly business expenses. But this got me thinking. Did they just increase the subscription fee to pay for the development of this colossal failure of an "upgrade"? And how long before they scrap the "Disable new Acrobat" feature so they don't have to maintain two separate systems?
NOBODY SEEMS HAPPY
I decided to do some research, so I web searched "Disable new Acrobat". A one-minute YouTube video came up. I already knew how to do it, but I clicked the link anyway, just to read the comments. There were lots of positive and thankful comments to the video poster about saving them from this nightmare, and lots of negative comments directed toward Adobe for causing hours of frustration and lost productivity. It seems Adobe rolled out the "new experience" user interface (UI), without any introduction, by sneaking it into an update. While there was an easy reversal, it was not obvious to anyone, not stated by Adobe, and no option to opt out was presented beforehand.
The top link in my search led to the Adobe Support Community website. It seems Adobe began foisting this unwanted UI upon loyal customers around June of 2023. The comments section was lit. I encourage you to read some of the comments. One commentor said this: "Wow. It was hard to believe this thread could have gotten worse in one day, but apparently it has." I don't think I've ever read through every single comment in a list that long. I couldn't find one positive comment about the new UI, apart from Adobe officials trying to sell it as "new and improved", without backing up that claim with any evidence.
Commentors addressed Adobe's post point-by-point. Here's one of my favorites answering the point "we hope that as you get familiar with the new interface, you can be more productive and get more out of Acrobat":
"Seriously???? You want users that have become familiar to (sic) the old interface over decades (with minor changes here and there) to 'get familiar with the new interface' and 'be more productive.' Again, seriously. Do you understand what you are saying? You are asking professionals who have been productive to become unproductive and then become 'familiar with the new interface' so professionals who have been productive, 'can be more productive' again?
Seriously, do you understand what you just said to justify the complete change to the interface?"
A major complaint was that there was no additional functionality in the update. In fact, many posters stated there was less, and felt they made the change only for the sake of change. One thing I noticed was that they switched the pages/bookmarks panel from the left side to the right, and the tools panel from right to left. It has been the other way for decades. I know for me, it will take a long time to get used to something like that. One poster compared it to a car designer switching the gas pedal and the brake pedal around. Touché. I don't like either panel showing until I need to use them because they take up too much real estate on the screen. I like the PDF to be the full width of my screen, but it looks like you might be stuck with their permanent presence.
I noticed they tried to make it look and feel like a mobile app. As someone who sits in front of a large computer monitor all day, beating the tar out of the keys of a real keyboard, and using a real mouse for maximum speed and productivity, I'm not really interested in unintuitive "intuitive" (not a typo) buttons to try to figure things out.
*Just a quick story in the middle of this rant*
I've made a few screenshare how-to YouTube videos. The one with the most views is about how to make a signature stamp with a transparent background. I was a newb when I made that one so I had $10 microphone. Lots of "great video but I can't hear you", and "the volume is too low" comments. I was tempted to respond "you can always turn up your volume", but I instead exercised professional self-control. This particular comment made me laugh out loud: "This guy knows how to do everything - except interact with a microphone." A well-deserved burn. After that one I invested some money in real microphone. It really picks up the sound of my keyboard abuse, which led to another LOL comment: "That poor keyboard".
*Back to my rant*
I always thought a hamburger menu was the lighted display in the McDonald's drive-thru, but apparently, it's an expandable menu button with three horizontal lines, that controls most of the program. I have a hard enough time sliding the mouse to an item in the fourth expansion. Good luck using your finger on a mobile app. Speaking of which, is anybody going to be doing the kind of work the professionals on that thread are doing on a daily basis, on a cell phone or tablet?
There were lots of complaints about additional bugs, inefficiencies, more mouse clicks to accomplish the same task, slow performance, and on and on and on. Many commentors were unhappy with the way it was rolled out without warning, causing hours of lost productivity before discovering they could simply toggle back to the old version. A poster compared it your landlord sneaking into your house when you're not home and rearranging the entire house the way he thinks it should be. One poster was furious as he had been running a Zoom meeting when he discovered the new UI, and was embarrassed because he didn't know how to do anything. Many feared that the choice to revert to the old UI would eventually disappear. Others complained that the moderators of the site had removed posts that contained the solution to disable the new Acrobat. Someone posted a link where you can voice your opinion to Adobe and vote to tell them to scrap the new UI. There are lots of comments there as well. Nothing positive. I encourage you to read them.
One of the most powerful aspects of Acrobat Pro has always been the ability to customize the workspace and develop custom scripts and tools to automate processes. It seems all this is lost with the new UI. This comment from the previous link goes straight to that point:
"They (companies that use Acrobat Pro) have developed actions and scripts to automate processes on dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of PDF files every day. These industries include print, prepress, graphic design, accessibility & remediation, accessible forms, variable forms, variable printing, data validation, financial institutions (think of all those bank statements every month!), health care, investment and finance, and manufacturing.
Dramatic GUI changes like 2023's completely change how these automated processes work...if they still work at all.
The cost to these industries to correct the now-broken processes — brought on by Adobe's whimsical, untested design idea — is appalling. If I was a major corporation hit by this unnecessary expense, I'd ban Adobe products from my company and look for another PDF vendor."
One commentor compared this move by Adobe to the New Coke blunder by Coca Cola in the 1980s that is studied in business schools:
"But Coca-Cola reacted correctly, and that's the lesson taught in marketing classes today: respond to the users, apologize, and bring back the old product."
The Acrobat Support Community was instrumental in helping me to become the Acrobat and JavaScript expert I am today. That's where I went for all the answers to my questions. Volunteer experts who freely share their knowledge were generous with their time and often shared solutions they had spent hours developing. I know a lot of these experts – not personally, but through electronic interactions over the years. I trust the community. When this community gives a resounding "no thanks" to a major software change, it's time to listen. But will they? We'll see what happens.