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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Elina Sellgren commented
Agree with all of the above. Please do NOT make the new layout obligatory at any point.
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Patrick McCarthy
commented
Time and money would have been better spent on improving accessibility tools. Thanks, Bevi, for posting this and including how to disable this horrible interface.
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Josh Owens commented
I can't use the Magnet app to snap the new Adobe to the side of my screen on Mac but it works on old Adobe. Also, make the interface similar to the old one
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Amy Banks
commented
This new version is awful. I can't fill in papework from my contractors. I have to go back to paper and scanning it in. I don't know what they were thinking. I assume these young inexperienced people that are taking technology backwards was also hired here. Please please get the old one back. I have noticed all our contruction contractors have also started moving to a different product. Thanks for making a great product into a disaster.
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Keith Perceval commented
Put the thumbnails add function back so that one can merge images into 1 single pdf. And no, I refuse to pay for that. If you want me to pay, I'll use another tool that does that very well.
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Rishav Koirala commented
This has to be the worst product update I've seen in the last few years. There is nothing useful about this update, and it hasn't made my productivity any better. Rather, it has resulted in a waste of my time trying to avoid the frequent glitches and crashes and finding the way to revert to the old design. What a joke.
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Wendy Shiraki-Raphael commented
Hello! I dislike the new user interface. I am accustomed to seeing my basic options on the right side, we should have at least a choice as to what side these appear. My main gripe was that when organizing pages I could not find how to extract pages from a document. I looked everywhere I inquired everywhere but I could not find how. After reverting back to original layout there it was right where it should be. Granted changes to improve Acrobat should continue, but such a major overhaul of the interface is very jarring and disturbs everyone's workflow. Baby steps please.
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Sarah
commented
Why mess around and move everything, when literally nobody asked for that?! Nobody asked for any of that. I lost time today with work because I couldn't even move a single text box! Why was that complicated?! I use this every single day for work; I contemplated quitting my job more than usual today because of this horrible experience with Adobe. So glad that I was able to go back to the old Adobe, I don't know what I was going to do otherwise. Cut your loss Adobe and count it as a fail, and hit delete on this new Adobe.
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Michelle Savarese commented
...this so called 'update' i mean really how could you actually create a product that doesn't allow files to be edited in any significant way....total loss on the user end
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David Bruce Hericks
commented
This 2023 update is the worst, Worse still than the last one (that we can revert to, but is still worse than the prior one. Adobe Acrobat (Not DC) was THE TOOL TO HAVE, we could not live without it even though our company tried to use other PDF apps because of the exorbitant cost. Now that Adobe has 2X unnecessarily messed with the interface, caused MILLIONS of HOURS of lost labor for their users and provided ZERO in improvements. It is probably time to go to some other application.
Maybe you are working (and betting the company livelihood) on AI so we don't even need the GUI interface anymore.. But for those of us working 60-80 hour weeks we DID NOT NEED THIS POORLY ENVISIONED AND EXECUTED update to cause us further difficulty and not being able to work efficiently. STOP CHANGING ACROBAT. LEAVE IT ALONE, STOP LISTENING to GUI designers changing things for the sake of change.
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Jeff C commented
Thank you for the insight on disabling the new acrobat. It's awful!
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Scott Schulte
commented
This "modern viewer" idiocy just proves that the majority of programmers are not needed. They do idiotic stuff like this to justify their employment. They don't have the mental capacity to grasp the simple axiom if it isn't broken then don't fix it. Just look at the miserable disaster a well known search engine has become do to programers fixing it.
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Brian Marthage commented
This version of Adobe does suck - it has lost a lot of its functionality for me. particularly the redact function - it's almost useless now.
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David Peters commented
@all, be prepared that the improvement of the user interface will NEVER happen.
Adobe will inevitably continue to totally and utterly 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘄 Acrobat (although hardly imaginable, but wait and see for yourself).
So, not much to see here for the next 50 years.
Anyone looking for the world's best PDF software for professionals, look no further than to Tracker Software in Canada.
In the meantime, lots of entertaining reading material here from thousands of users hating the abysmal childish slow buggy rubbish interface of Adobe Acrobat:
https://bit.ly/Acrobat-Uservoice-Interface
(this is a shortened link to the search result page in this Uservoice forum) -
Cameron Cooley commented
@Kelly Pettyman
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 -
Kelly Prettyman commented
What the **** happened! OMG They really went and screwed up Adobe!
Please please please please please get rid of this ********* version! It was just fine the way it was now I cannot find anything and my job counts on this software!!!!!!!!!!! -
Shannon Wiggins commented
I hate the new interface. Thankfully, I found a forum that explained how to switch back to the original. It would be helpful to: 1.) Have the original as the default and the new interface as the option and 2.) Have a toggle button easily accessible to switch between the views. I lost a great deal of time on work projects because I could not figure out how to use the new interface.
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Robbie Patterson commented
Turning off auto updates (via Preferences on the Mac) and disabling new version hasn’t stopped Adobe fiddling with scroll bars and messing with the UI on the classic version. I honestly wonder if there’s an engineer who has been installed by a competitor to sabotage this product, the updates and PR from it is THAT bad and the useless generic responses in broken English from the nodding heads on Adobes forums don’t help much. Always worth looking at who and what a product is for before working on it, and Acrobat Pro is for prepress, Repro and artworking - is there a solid alternative? This damages Indesign and Photoshops standing too…
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m l carter commented
I agree with the complaints regarding the new interface. Lest you think users are just complaining for sport, I missed a deadline trying to use the new interface because I could not figure out how go back to classic. Oh yeah, and lost that new client. Instead of sharing my opinion on the new interface and its surprise launch (words that would make a longshoreman blush) … Do this: the file should open in older/classic interface and the user can select to use the new one. It should have never been the other way around. Obviously, you are caught up in your nifty new creation and totally missed what’s most important…Your Business Users’ time and money. Show your creation to mommy and daddy before you let it loose on millions of people.
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Philip Tchernov commented
The new "simplified" interface is bad. I can write a book about why it's bad but that is not my job. Just stop. You knew this was a bad Idea since you have the option to revert back to the classic view. The new view is useless, it is worse than any other competitor. You disable that option and people will either switch or download old version of your software.