Breaking News: Adobe announces Acrobat 8 (exclusive videos)

i’d be interested to learn the answer to the question of why they can’t make the acrobat reader product more lightweight? foxit reader is awesome and approx 1MB — compared to acrobat reader (i know there are a bunch more features in full acrobat) bloat.

and why does podtech only use quicktime video format — give us choices — quicktime plugin is *the* worst plugin experience and should be marked badware!

Question: does it still display PDF-files?
Because honestly, that is all I’ve ever done (tried doing) using the reader.

Tim: I asked about that in the interview. They said that a good part of the work the team was doing was aimed at making it lighter weight. But, they also admit that their first priority is to make sure they have the highest fidelity reproduction (most faithfulness to what will get printed). That is where a lot of the bloat comes from. Oh, and the cool new collaboration and form features.

I’m working on other formats. Unfortunately I don’t have the resources yet to do other formats. Personally I don’t mind Quicktime that much anymore. If it’s good enough for Rocketboom and Ze Frank it’s good enough for me.

Tim: I asked about that in the interview. They said that a good part of the work the team was doing was aimed at making it lighter weight. But, they also admit that their first priority is to make sure they have the highest fidelity reproduction (most faithfulness to what will get printed). That is where a lot of the bloat comes from. Oh, and the cool new collaboration and form features.

I’m working on other formats. Unfortunately I don’t have the resources yet to do other formats. Personally I don’t mind Quicktime that much anymore. If it’s good enough for Rocketboom and Ze Frank it’s good enough for me.

I loooove Acrobat. Hopefully the output settings are easier to use in the version 8. I have a lot of trouble getting images to look right in version 7… even with high quality, low compression settings. Thanks for the review Rob.

Any chance version 8 could load any slower than version 7, or is that simply impossible? Acrobat was great back when it didn’t take 2 minutes to start on a brand new PC… What happened over there, did they let Team Bloatoshop work on the code?

Skeptic, I’ll be the first to try it when I can get the Reader. The UI is certainly improved, though, on version 8.

FoxIt Reader rocks! On new machines I don’t even bother installing Adobe’s bloat, slow as a dead dog, reader.

November, right?

Rick, not sure when it’ll be here. I’ll try to find out.

Hey Robert, Where is that interview with Jonathan Schwartz?

manish: that’s part of my show. Should be starting this week sometime. More news soon, I hope. We’re working hard on it.

Thanks Robert. Actually I had submitted a question so was kinda curious.

Microsoft aren’t the only ones gunning for Adobes Acrobat profits. Have a look at:

http://www.autodesk.com/dwf

Can only one person share their desktop in the new conference area?

Forgot to add, 1 more vote against Quicktime .mov

The QT Player is awful but WMP gave me silent movies with these files.

Hi Robert,

I *hate* quicktime and now I can’t see your videos.
I used to watch stuff you did in C9. Not that I like WMV, but as a plugin it’s way better.

I hope you don’t have to download a music store to use the thing like you have to do with “Quick”time.

I seriously doubt a newer acrobat could load any slower than 7. But then again, I haven’t heard anything about Flash Paper. So all logic is out.

Just to echo the first commenter – don’t bother with Acrobat Reader, just get Foxit reader. Like #2, all I do with PDFs is view them, and nothing does it faster than Foxit.

“But, they also admit that their first priority is to make sure they have the highest fidelity reproduction (most faithfulness to what will get printed)”

-not so. The whole point of PDF is that always prints out right, every time, and it does whatever reader you use. Acrobat Reader is so slow because of all the junk plugins it loads, like the forms stuff. You might need that stuff in some businesses, most home users don’t need to bother and should just get Foxit.

Adobe doesn’t need announcements, they communicate through nagware.

Is the new Acrobat “Vista aware”?

FoxIt Software has a great pdf reader that makes a great alternative to Adobe:

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

get a live

Hold down the SHIFT key when you launch Reader or Acrobat and it will skip loading the plug-ins. If you want it to never load a plug-in, just move the plug-in files from the plug_ins directory to Optional (or some other, inert location). You can learn about the plug-ins and their filenames by selecting Help > About Adobe Plug-Ins…. (These are Windows-specific tips that can be adapted to Mac.)

For command-line PDF manipulation, try my free (gpl) pdftk: http://www.pdftk.com. I’m planning a new release this week. Java and C# fans should check out iText: http://www.lowagie.com/iText/

Oh, and please buy my book, PDF Hacks.

Cheers- Sid

> last week I got an exclusive look at it

I am wondering why you say that your look was “exclusive”? All us editors got one-on-one previews from the Adobe marketing people of Acrobat Pro 8, Connect, and Acrobat 3D.