Acrobatic Maneuvers, Part 3

XPS. If you haven't heard of it yet, you will. Microsoft will make damn sure of it. Maybe they'll enter into an exclusive contract with your state, and pretty soon you'll be getting your baby's birth certificate e-mailed to you as an XPS file. Or they'll set up a deal with ADP to have your paychecks generated in XPS format. No matter how it happens, one day soon you'll be staring at a file with an XPS extension wondering "what fresh hell is this?"

And so, you'll be in search of the viewer for this new, pointless paper replacement. Well, here it is. Ultimately, I could go on about how the XPS Viewer is more lightweight, easier to user, and faster than Adobe's Reader; but does it really matter? In fact, to you the end-user, does it really matter that Adobe is developing their own PDF replacement similar to XPS? Moreover, do you care when I tell you that these new specifications are based on packing XML and accompanying resources into a ZIP-based container file? Of course not.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but all you really, really want is a way to view documents…

• without any fear of accidentally changing them,
• in a pleasant, non-intrusive interface,
• without squiggly lines under words the spell-checker didn't recognize,
• while retaining your ability to click on hyperlinks,
• and be confident that if you forward it to a friend, he or she will be able to read it.

To me, it sounds like what you're viewing right now. A web page. Microsoft, Adobe, tell me again...why does the average user need these paper specifications?

Acrobatic Maneuvers, Part 2

My work just gave me a new laptop, and I was not thrilled to discover it came with Adobe Acrobat 8.0 installed.Not the Reader mind you, which is a big enough pain, but the full-blown crap-fest. Which, ultimately was completely unnecessary. Besides Office 2007 offering a free plug-in for PDF creation, there are several free PDF writers available.

Anyway, it started out innocently enough. I was looking for that setting--you know the one. The "Please don't hang and/or crash my browser by trying to integrate with it" setting. I've unchecked this box in Adobe Acrobat Reader on every computer I've ever owned since the beginning of time. And here I was once again struggling to find it. I knew the category was something like Browser, Web--why does a simple program for printing/reading documents have so many options?!

Finally, I found it: Internet. There was the checkbox. I unchecked it, clicked OK, and was ready to move on with my life. Then I got hit with this:

Wwwhaa… What could you possibly need to run the installer for? Set a registry setting and be done with it. Then I got hit with this gem:

Now, lest you readers think I'm a complete moron, note that I had the sense to close down the Firefox window that was displaying a PDF. The window Adobe was sentencing to death was a perfectly innocent window not hurting anyone. Well, fine--I'll shut Firefox down completely. Ok, install, install, install… (Remember: one preference was changed. ) Alright, it appears to be done. I'll just--

C'mon!! Do you have any idea how many programs I have open right now?! I did what you asked. I shut down everything you told me to. I changed one stinking preference. What's the matter with you people?!

Next time we'll talk about the future of "digital paper." Meanwhile, I've gotta reboot my machine…

Acrobatic Maneuvers

I have never been a fan of PDF's. I remember the first time I was introduced to the product. I was attempting to download some form from the IRS, but they made it clear that I would not be able to do anything with the file if I didn't have Adobe's viewer. This confused me (as a user), but intrigued me (as a computer programmer). So, I dutifully downloaded this "Acrobat Reader" and opened this "super-special" document. What I was presented with was anything but special. It was a plain, vanilla document. I clicked around on it to determine if it was interactive. It was anything but. At the time, I wondered if it wasn't just a scanned document. But, I soon realized that the clarity was too good. This was just a simple, standard document. Why would I need to download a special viewer for this? I have everything from a web browser to Microsoft Word installed on my computer… What was wrong with those programs?!

Fast-forward countless years, and I still have a hate-hate relationship with Adobe Acrobat. To me, it has never proven its value versus the immense inconvenience it has caused me. And I'm not alone. Jacob Nielsen, the web's resident "usability pundit" called for the end to the overuse of PDF's in 2003. Despite that, here we are four years later, still toiling with them.

But, how did we get here? Mostly because of missed opportunities, in my opinion. When PDF first hit the scene in 1993, what did they really bring to the table? Vector graphics, rigid layout, embeddable fonts... Certainly all of the word processors at the time had that. And what about HTML? Fixed positioning didn't come along until CSS2 in 1997. The development of Scalable Vector Graphics didn't even start until 1998. Embeddable fonts is still not widely implemented. So PDF's moved into a vacuum, and created a solution to fix a problem most users didn't even know they had.

Adobe: No, no--you're still not getting it. This will let you print and display documents in a device-independent way, with advanced support for font specification and fallback so that the document will appear exactly how the author intended!
Joe User: This is a manual for my refrigerator.

And once they had a firm foothold, they began to add more and more features to try and justify its existence. Among the most questionable were scripting, encryption, and digital signing. Allowing a user to fill out a PDF file as if it were a form is admirable, but it still doesn't seem like the ideal UI for that. And, of course, that darling of Corporate America: DRM.

Next time, we'll talk about a fun experience I had with Adobe's most recent installment of Acrobat.

Hot hits of the 90's

Wow. Counting Crows, Live, and Collective Soul. All in one big show. I wonder if it's possible to open some sort of inter-dimensional gateway if you condense enough mediocrity in one place.

Here's something to wrap your head around: remember that Star Trek episode where the crew met the opposite versions of themselves? What's it like when a middle-of-the-road band meets its opposite?

"Our" Counting Crows: Hey! You guys are just like us!
"Opposite" Counting Crows: Only opposite!
"Our" CC: In our dimension, we've had moderate success, a few hits, mostly on "Adult Contemporary" stations. Nothing to write home about. How about you guys?!
"Opposite" CC: Um...about the same.


(By the way, the radio commercial said that "12 And Under Are FREE!!" Sounds like a rockin' good time.)

Rejected by Bartlett #7

In the future, I plan on taking more of an active role in the decisions I make ...

- Paris Hilton, on her way to jail