Why did Acrobat change the UI to this simplistic, childish design? Terrible, slower to use.
Acrobat Pro used to be seamless, easy to use and efficiently laid out. Now it looks like some child's puzzle game where you have to access numerous screens to accomplish what you used to be able to do from ONE PLACE.
Maddening, dumb redesign that apparently was done for what? Tablet use? Why ruin something many of us use in professional settings so students and casual users can play around with their school prom flyer on mom's ipad?
It is ugly and not at all intuitive. Clearly the project team didn't have anyone with institutional knowledge involved.
Elysia99
shared this idea
26 comments
-
Marko
commented
I agree. Acrobat DC is horrible. It seems like a web page instead of a full, professional application. I am only using it now because Catalina no longer will run the previous versions. It never has been a very convenient program to use (very dated, for years...decades?) and now even more heinous.
-
Andre Weinand
commented
After being a long time Acrobat 11 user, I bought Acrobat 2017 because that's the last 64 bit version that does not require a subscription and I wanted to upgrade to macOS Catalina.
And now I'm stuck with this nightmare of a childish UI.
Whenever I'm using it, I'm reminded how bad UIs can get and why I will refrain from spending any money on Acrobat in the future...
-
James Burtt
commented
What a terribly backward move, Adobe!
It is counter-intuitive moving up and down a document using left and right arrows.
The arrows only move one page at a time. I need to move multiple pages at a time in long dox.
How to I navigate to the beginning and end of a document instantly?
Where did the TOC go?
It only minimally responds to the scroll bar on my Microsoft mouse -
No
commented
Things are at their very worse with Abobe currently. Think you're getting away with murder? You guys are going to pay for blooding your customers.
-
Anonymous
commented
I have to click on 3-4 things to do simple operations like crop. Using Acrobat for 20 years this has to be bar far the least usable version. I cringe everytime I know I have to use it.
-
W. Lobb
commented
Adobe Acrobat Reader has the worst user interface I've ever seen in document readers/editors. My experience goes back to the very earliest editing tools, when computers were the size of refrigerators or bigger. The Reader 2019 updates fouled up a ****** UI even more. Did Adobe EVER TEST THE UI ON HUMANS? Or did their UX designers confidently invent something that looks pleasing to marketing and that was that? I just lost hours of highlighting on a long and deep technical paper because it's totally not obvious how and when to save changes. I think I reopened the same file by mistake and blew away all that work. What a piece of ****.
-
Anonymous
commented
So now it's a year later and I'm so frustrated with trying to figure out where things are every time I use this program. Is it not fixed yet? Was there no response from Adobe? I have the older version on my computer at work which is so intuitive -- the tools are right there to be used.
What other options are out there?
-
JMR
commented
AGREED. And barely functional. It’s so frustrating.
-
Anonymous
commented
I completely AGREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It wastes so much of my time trying to figure out where the **** everything is and then going back and forth between tool panels just to do one simple task that would've taken me 2 min. ends up being 6 - 10 minutes.I HATE HATE HATE IT!
-
Anonymous
commented
Awful, bring back the old version!!!!!!
-
Bill
commented
Where did the toolbar go In Adobe Acrobat Pro DC? Can I go back to an earlier version of Adobe Acrobat?
-
CS
commented
Acrobat has like many things these days made the software worse by trying to make it better. I loved 8 and 10. even 11. this "simple" version is so bad. I can't even find easily how to sign something.
-
Anonymous
commented
Elysia99 very good comment and followed up with very good ones from Alan Gibertson and others. Adobe clearly has a problem. I truly wonder if it is just that employees don't care or if it is a management style of that believes ANY change is a good change---no need to consider any negative consequences. Maybe we could call it the "Adobe NoNegCon Philosophy of Software Design".
-
Alan Gilbertson
commented
If the Acrobat DC UI has any redeeming qualities, I have yet to find them. It appears to have been designed to kill productivity and increase frustration. Even after all this time, it still takes me about twice as long to complete almost any task in DC as compared with the same task in Acrobat Pro IX, which was already something of a backward step from Acrobat 8, or even X and XI, as awful as they were.
Not one of the many professionals I talk to and correspond with has had anything positive to say about the DC UI. The entire Acrobat team, especially the PM, *must* internalize basic UX design principles such as "form follows function." Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" should be required monthly reading for a year until everyone involved understands why and how to conduct proper usability testing.
If experienced professional users have a hard time with the UI, what chance have the less tech-savvy workers that we end up having to support? Other Adobe teams are 100x more customer-focused. Acrobat has long stood out as deaf to customer complaints. It's past time for that to change.
-
Anonymous
commented
"Autopilot" for redesigning (as the commenter suggested) is a function of poor management and leadership. Probably many reasons, but one is likely beauty over usability.
-
[Deleted User]
commented
Yes, a million times yes. UI team seems to be on autopilot just redesigning because they have nothing better to do.
-
Anonymous
commented
Feels like a mid 2000s game intended for elementary school kids.
-
Anonymous
commented
Ayush, in order for you to ask that question, you must not use the newest version of Adobe at all. Take a look at "Adobe Sucks" for a sampling of the problems. Also take a look at the myriad of topics related to the user interface (including tools and toolbars) and comments about the user interface.
-
Elysia99
commented
Ayush, I believe they are referring to the need to constantly open that menu to access tools we pros use: commenting, editing, printing...they're all on that screen instead of available via a toolbar.
Why did Adobe kill the toolbar? The most UI-friendly, intuitive method of performing tasks?
As others have mentioned, professionals are probably NOT using a tablet to work on content.
The ability to do multiple tasks simultaneously has been quashed, and Adobe has managed to make every task take longer to achieve. Progress??? -
Kelly Vaughn
commented
Yes x 1000!