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Acrobat for Windows and Mac: User Interface

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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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. The left panel is permanently positioned on the screen and obscures part of the document below. Seriously Adobe, WTF.

  4. The entire menu/panel system can't be customized, moved, or docked. Another WTF.

  5. 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?

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  1. Revert the interface back to what it was.

  2. Fix Acrobat's bugs. There are so many!

  3. 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.

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Bevi Chagnon | PubCom.com shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →

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  • KelRandy Courts commented  ·   ·  Report

    ditch it. I hate it. Please leave the option of the old interface in place

  • Bryan Eckes commented  ·   ·  Report

    What a terrible update. Stop fixing things that are not broken. This one is total garbage!

  • Grafer Safranalski commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have Acrobat Pro (64-bit) 2023.003.20284 and the is no hamburger menu. I can't back to the older version. Separation preview mode is much more complicated in use. Every time when I add "print" icon it disappears. It's madness.

  • Iain McGuirke commented  ·   ·  Report

    I have been an Adobe Acrobat user since the beginning back in the 90s, so that's probably nearly 30 years of user experience.

    Now while I don't expect Adobe to know these details, I would have expected them to consult their users before making such a drastic and really quite unnecessary change.

    I have gone from being a pretty competent acrobat user to being practically a newbie overnight. If I wanted to learn new software to allow me to do my daily work, Id probably not have chosen adobe anyway as there are so many better cheaper alternatives out there. Were it not for the reverting to the previous layout ability in this new update, I think I would have been forced to look elsewhere for my PDF software needs.

    a total clusterf### of an update.

  • Dr. Milker commented  ·   ·  Report

    Literally the worst update I have ever seen, and that's saying something. Everybody involved in developing the new UI should be fired immediately.

  • Trace commented  ·   ·  Report

    Crikey - they're defending this garbage over on FB! - Dude, I DID just "take the new interface for a spin" and I gave you my feedback....and I'm telling you it's utter garbage!

    Don't shoot the messenger...but here's the link they gave me - 'Introducing the new Acrobat experience':

    https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/new-acrobat-experience.html?linkId=100000216145874

  • Zachary Peek commented  ·   ·  Report

    Could tell immediately that the quality of the product took a nose dive with this new update.

  • David Given commented  ·   ·  Report

    I was trying to edit and redact a document today, changes that would usually take me less than five minutes, and I spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to do those things with the new viewer. Thank goodness I found a support forum that told me how to disable the new interface!!

  • TCP commented  ·   ·  Report

    The new UI is making me think about ditching Adobe altogether and switching to a free PDF reader. I have paid for Adobe in the past but with these new changes, I'll never pay for it again.

  • Ian Kingston commented  ·   ·  Report

    The new interface makes commenting incredibly slow. Having to constantly switch between keyboard and mouse is a really bad idea.

    I usually adjust to new interfaces (like the MS ribbon) very quickly, but this is just a total wreck. Reverted to the old interface within 24 hours to regain productivity.

  • Michael Sham commented  ·   ·  Report

    I F****** hate the new UI. I have work to do; I don't have time for this nonsense!

  • Feissbuck Descht commented  ·   ·  Report

    This new UI is a joke! A complete waste of time and money. The old UI was perfectly fine, why change it???
    Better spend some (or: a lot of!) time making Acrobat faster and more responsive!

  • Ana Jovanović commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree with absolutely everything Bevi Chagnon said. This new look is a complete disaster that makes me waste an incredible amount of time in my work on things that used to be a simple one-click action, and Adobe is not my primary tool, I am a translator, and I usually use Adobe only to read the documents I receive for translation in PDF format. However, if disabling the new interface becomes impossible, I will certainly ditch Adobe altogether and get another PDF reader because this is pointless. To me it looks like a child decided to play around a bit with a very helpful, user-friendly tool. DISASTER!!!!!!!
    BTW, I have already disabled the new look, and it somehow got enabled again and I was already petrified thinking I would not be able to disable it again in the middle of my working day.
    I have nothing against change, but only if it helps my workflow, not if it destroys it completely as the new Adobe interface does!

  • Trace commented  ·   ·  Report

    OMFG - What on earth are Adobe thinking with this latest update? What an utter dog's breakfast of a GUI and nothing but a huge backwards step! I'm a long-time designer & prepress user and it took me ages to find the basics I use daily...what a waste of time & money. Thanks for sharing how to 'Disable New Acrobat' in the menu otherwise I would wasted even more time.

    I can't even log into the Adobe Community forum as the site keeps telling me to login over and over again (and that's across 3x different browsers and after clearing the cache) - So I certainly hope someone from Adobe reads this thread as the new version of Acrobat is utter useless garbage!

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Report

    I can't use the new interface. It's... terrible. Destroying the muscle memory of users for no purpose is awful.

    (And popups, search fields, etc that block the document itself = failure.)

  • Janice Morgan commented  ·   ·  Report

    This new version is the absolute worst I have ever seen. Extracting pages is near to impossible by having to create a New Folder, then you have to move the page from that folder to the folder you actually wanted it to go. Get rid of this!!!

  • Arianna Hartz commented  ·   ·  Report

    Incredibly frustrated with how I should be able to rotate and arrange pages, every time I try to rotate pages it randomly duplicates any pages I've selected (CAN'T UNDO) and or just opens up the full screen view when I'm trying to look at all of them. Nothing about this update is helpful, accessible, or user-friendly. They took a perfectly good application and completely screwed it all up.

  • Paula commented  ·   ·  Report

    As mentioned above the new interface is not "modern". I can't customize menus/toolbars to how I want them or work. I don't know what the strange icons do until after I click on them. I can't put an UNDO button is the quick access toolbar to undo whatever damage I did by having to click icons just to find out what they do. I'm stuck with functions in the quick access toolbar that I don't use regularly like signatures. And the modern look should include some color.

  • Ze Pereira commented  ·   ·  Report

    The new version is user-unfriendly and utterly annoying.

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