Ditch the 2023 User Interface in Acrobat
There are so many shortcomings and problems with the new 2023 GUI interface. Here are just a few:
Swapping left and right-hand panels for no reason. This does not improve anything for users. It just forces users to change everything about how they work in Acrobat every workday.
Functions are indicated by random icons. In the 90s, we learned that icons in software and websites don't work across different populations. Users have a difficult time figuring out what the heck they mean. Give text labels.
The left panel is permanently positioned on the screen and obscures part of the document below. Seriously Adobe, WTF.
The entire menu/panel system can't be customized, moved, or docked. Another WTF.
Hamburger menus (those obscure 3 horizontal lines) are used on mobile interfaces to collapse menus. They are totally unnecessary and inappropriate on desktop interfaces — where working people spend most of their time working. Give people real menus with real names. "Menu" is not accurate, either. What is the name of the other menu to the right? Menu 2? Cheeseburger Menu?
The new interface is inaccessible for those with disabilities who use assistive technologies, especially screen reader users. Adobe has seriously violated its VPAT with governments and corporations worldwide who are required by law to provide accessible work environments and tools.
Grey on Grey is not an accessible color scheme. Can't tell if some icons are active or disabled. Those with low vision can't discern the icons.
Digital signatures, Document Cloud (where Adobe stores your files by default), subscriptions, OCR, file creation, file combining, and accessibility all have reported major problems for the past few years...but rather than fix these critical problems, money was instead spent on rearranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.
As long-time PDF consultants, my firm has found that the majority of customers are professionals who use Acrobat for their jobs. These are not "casual" users working on their smartphones. They are using desktops/laptops with full screens, not mobile devices to do their jobs. And they work with PDFs a lot.
They 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.
There are now many reputable competitors to Adobe Acrobat: See:
— https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-pdf-editors
— https://www.techradar.com/best/pdf-editors
— https://www.pcworld.com/article/407214/best-pdf-editors.html
Calling this Acrobat's "Modern Viewer" is a form of gaslighting Adobe customers. It's not modern at all — 30 years ago, using icons failed in software and web interfaces, and it's failing again with Acrobat 2023. Sometimes retro isn't good, especially retro user interfaces. Please don't attempt to bring back disco, old-fashioned 20 inch TVs, polyester suits, rotary phones and VHS tapes as being "Modern," too.
Ditch this "Modern Viewer" and instead give us a working tool to get our jobs done.
Revert the interface back to what it was.
Fix Acrobat's bugs. There are so many!
And improve the accessibility for those with disabilities (who can't get to the Comments panel, Bookmarks panel, understand what and how much is redacted, make edits or change the content, scale/enlarge the interface, nor sign a PDF).
For those still reading this, users can revert to the old interface for now (August 2023).
— Windows: Hamburger Menu / Disable New Acrobat
— Mac: View Menu / Disable New Acrobat
I have no idea who long Adobe is going to let us revert to the "real" interface.
Bevi Chagnon | PubCom.com
shared this idea
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Morning Hullinger commented
I use Acrobat daily for production printing. Having to relearn a program in the middle of a job is frustrating, time consuming and costly.
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CLASSIC PERFORMANCE - WORKSHOP PROFILE commented
Acrobat isn't critical to my work but I have been using it for years and any change that has no specific benefit to me is just an annoyance. I have reverted to the old format as per the forum suggestion.
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Veronica
commented
This was perfect and user friendly before. All the functions out in the open. Hate this new design. It is definitely NOT a better user interface. It also interfered with the display of some "designed" pages and stopped recognizing them as designed pages within adobe. Very disappointed as now I cannot even edit those pages properly anymore.
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Chris Russo commented
I'm fine with change, but not this. Absolutely Awful.
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Anne
commented
I use acrobat reader to READ pdf files.... what a novel idea! I need to search the large documents. This new version cannot find the word when it's right on the ******* page!!! This is a perfect example of "fix it until it's useless"!!! This is what computer science has given us!
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Camille Shaheen-Tunberg commented
This is the worst user-interface Adobe has come up with for those of us who work extensively with Acrobat. Don't the design engineers actually USE Acrobat.
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Anonymous
commented
What Bevi said. She covers everything I could have thought of and covers it well.
An Adobe engineer told me this new look is incomplete and better things are coming. But really? Why release a new (useless) UI when even the engineers know it's not ready for prime time.
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Lee BLack commented
Radically changing positions of everything affects the entire workflow. Nothing is positioned intuitively; you've subverted every expected tool placement you've established over the years. I get the impression someone who doesn't actually use Acrobat regularly in their non-Adobe job designed a sleek new interface that doesn't make any sense for usability. Switching around menu positions isn't improvement. Everyone who pays for your service, who has built their flow around your programs, suffers when you make drastic changes that serve no functional purpose. Program improvements, not superficial UI "updates".
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Jim Kochenderfer commented
Just go back to the prior version of adobe acrobat. The new version is nearly unusable.
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The new PDF interface is horrible. It is much worse in many ways than the previous version. Signing is worse. Right now, I can't figure out how to highlight text .
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Mark Courneyea
commented
The first word that came to my mind when I encountered the "modern viewer" was "abyssmal". My immediate response was to seek out somewhere to provide some form of feedback (vent?) for this egregious disaster visited upon users worldwide. I have never been more motivated to do so...and here I am. I find myself agreeing with just about everything I read...thank you...feeling better now...
PS I am an IT teacher and I will be using this as a case-study for bad software development and how-not-to-design-&-develop. -
Adina Carlson commented
As a disabled user with limited vision, I find the new interface nearly impossible to operate. Tiny little grey-ish images that all fade into the document. Did you run your own accessibility checker on this?
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Elizabeth Clark commented
Please quit flipping the interface around! It was fine the way it was and the new "upgrade" is anything but an improvement.
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Larry L commented
Your new version of Adobe Acrobat SUCKS! I thought you programmers were supposed to be logical - they are not. One more change like this and I am done with Adobe!
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AR
commented
The new interface is terrible. I just want to click pages from left to right like before, one at a time, not scroll. I just want to fit one full page at a time. Bring back the old toolbar at top. It's really hard to figure out what to dimwit this wretched new interface. What were you thinking?
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Sheri Ryder commented
If you would just tell me how to get my marquee zoom back, that would be great. I do not have the view button in the top left corner anymore.
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Monica Santa Teresa
commented
I agree. This is new display version is causing so many headaches and lost productivity in my opinion. Please give a user the option of going back to previous preferences intuitively.
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Ryan
commented
Contrast issues have always been a threat with designers that think it looks "nice" to have a "softer" look. Do not fear good visibility practices. Beyond that the random decision to phone-first organize the desktop application is frustrating. Just trying to find the print icon when I needed fast output was enough frustration to lead me here.
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Michael Crick commented
If I could meet, face to face, the people responsible for the radical changes brought by Adobe Acrobat Pro version 2023.003.20284, I would kick them until they bled to death! Who the F got it up their buttocks to change the entire way we interact with Adobe Acrobat?! This is not "new and improved'! This is an embarrassment for Adobe, and should own up to this blunder! I'm a long time Adobe user, and I'll be damned if I'm going to remain silent, after Adobe has succeeded at ruining a perfectly good software product! Fix your mistake Adobe! You've got morons on your staff!
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Luchsen
commented
That's right, it is unusable ...