giggsy 0 Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 These things reallt annoy me when you are not told that a link is to a pdf file and you click it to sit there for minutes while the pdf file downloads and there's nowt you can do about it. Very annoying. Link to post Share on other sites
TheOrange 0 Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 They can be annoying especially if they're just crappy things that could have been done on a normal page. Just look at the URL when your mouse is over it. Link to post Share on other sites
scoobydoo 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 My PC seems to really dislike big pdf files and often crashes. Link to post Share on other sites
badmigraine 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 Whether in an office or on the Net, .pdf files are the most annoying thing ever. Not only do they take forever to open up even on the latest superfast PC, but once you open them, it's awkward to move around and view them. You can size the page to fit the window, in which case the text is too small to read, or you can zoom it to readable text, but then you can only view 1/2 of the page at a time. And half the on-screen real estate is taken up by the blank space at the bottom of the page, the empty space to show where one page stops and the other starts, and the blank space atop the next page. However I scroll around, I seem to spend most of my time trying to avoid a full screen showing only the gaps between pages. It's kind of like balancing a balloon on your nose. It takes a lot of adjusting. And the scrolling is different from normal scrolling. You can click the arrows to scroll up or down, but it moves really really slowly. Or you can "grab" and move up or down. Too much work for me. I hate .pdf files. You have to print them out to read and understand them effectively. I found some cheats online where you can speed up Acrobat Reader's loading time by removing a lot of the junk that is in its folder, but it isn't a perfect solution. The final insult, as giggsy mentioned, is that once you click on a .pdf file, you can't use your computer until the damn thing has finished loading. It's like going back to 1995 when every PC operation involved 30+ seconds of spinning hard drive and blank flashing screen while things got drawn and re-drawn and loaded. A real speed and productivity killer. Hurry up and wait. I hate .pdf files! Link to post Share on other sites
Ocean11 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 Extracting the text from pdf for useful things like editing and translating is rife with pitfalls. Even with dedicated software, there's often a friendly message informing you that because the thing uses fonts or something impossibly technical like that, text cannot be extracted. Link to post Share on other sites
7-11 2 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 I don't like the things either. What exactly are they good for? Link to post Share on other sites
miteyak 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 Universality... Yes, hate the things... any site that uses them gets an immediate black mark, esp. as my whole computer works slower after acrobat has loaded. I have to quit the application and restart the computer to return to full internet functionality after using pdfs... I generally scan for pdf suffixes when I open a page, but sometimes I forget... Link to post Share on other sites
DumbStick 13 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 I hate them too. Not popular are they? Link to post Share on other sites
montoya 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 Long story: Acrobat and the .pdf format is now the big money-maker for Adobe. Their market for graphic tools (eg Photoshop, Illustrator, etc) is saturated, so they've shifted focus to the lucrative enterprise market, namely through Acrobat. Today if you wanted to move up the ladder of success at Adobe, you would probably have to brainwash yourself to believe .pdf files to be the greatest invention since white bread, and say stuff like "Acrobat enables .pdf-based Intelligent Documents to help streamline document-based processes". Fortunately I don't work there. Short story: .pdf files aren't going away anytime soon, there's too much money behind it. Link to post Share on other sites
badmigraine 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 I guess my proposed sales brochure wording would have been rejected? "Acrobat locks up users' computers for 10-20 seconds while loading a cumbersome, awkward-to-view picture of documents where you have to counter-intuitively pull up to view down, thus streamlining the 'red rage-filled hatred of institutional software' process." Think about it... NORMAL: scroll down, view down ACROBAT: pull up, view down. Who is the idiot that perpetuates this annoyance, version after version. WHY?!?!? Link to post Share on other sites
bobby12 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 acrobat still has the scroll bars on the right like any browser, but it has an extra thing where you can pull up/down. i think the pull thing is fairly intuitive actually if you look at the icon. the problem with pdf is that people make huge 20mb files and dont bother to warn anyone. good point is you can download a whole document in one go and save it, unlike a series of html pages. Link to post Share on other sites
Thunderpants 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 I'm 100% with the ANTI PDF gang! http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030714.html Link to post Share on other sites
miteyak 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 If people don't like it and it causes problems for regular folk, it's crap, simple as that. The customer is King. Link to post Share on other sites
Fattwins 0 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 pdf blows balls. Link to post Share on other sites
white-void 0 Posted November 12, 2004 Share Posted November 12, 2004 ...and they don't even feel good Link to post Share on other sites
charlotte 0 Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 I don't generally like them either especially on websites. But a well-made one as a pamphlet or guide book can be good. Link to post Share on other sites
yamayamayama 2 Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Well. I actually quite like them. Admittedly there can be completely useless ones but if they are made well.. Link to post Share on other sites
guzzlers-baps 0 Posted November 14, 2004 Share Posted November 14, 2004 I don't like them either. Why does it make your PC stall for so long - even a fairly fast one, with a fairly small pdf file. Thats really annoying. Link to post Share on other sites
giggsy 0 Posted November 17, 2004 Author Share Posted November 17, 2004 Glad I'm not the only one who hates the things! Link to post Share on other sites
badmigraine 0 Posted November 18, 2004 Share Posted November 18, 2004 The conclusion here is obvious -- .pdf files are to computer users as brussel sprouts are to children. Link to post Share on other sites
nzlegend 1 Posted November 18, 2004 Share Posted November 18, 2004 the problem with acrobat pdf reader being so bloody slow to load up is this - all the sundry plug-ins the acrobat insists on loading up each time. Most of these plug ins you never use and are pretty much useless for most users A program like "Adobe reader speed up" prevents all the plug ins from loading, it seems to work for me give it a whirl you can get it here its free Link to post Share on other sites
veronica 2 Posted November 19, 2004 Share Posted November 19, 2004 That sounds good, I'll give that a try. Thanks. Link to post Share on other sites
yamayamayama 2 Posted February 17, 2006 Share Posted February 17, 2006 Quote: Well. I actually quite like them I take that comment back. I no longer quite like them. I totally dislike them. Link to post Share on other sites
gamera 0 Posted February 17, 2006 Share Posted February 17, 2006 I have Adobe acrobat (not acrobat reader ) and sometimes I need to convert some files to pdf. file using it. As everyone says, yes it's annoying. I wonder probably it's more annoying when you have an access to some "ENGLISH language" pdf.files which are made on some Japanese OS computer. Because when I convert some to English pdf. file, I need to set the pdf. file size at "standard" size which is more than twice bigger than "smallest". If I set it at "smallerest" size, some letters seem to look funny on English OS computer, I have been told. If I need to convert some to Japanese pdf. file, no problem though. Maybe not that hard if that English language pdf.files are made on English OS computer? Link to post Share on other sites
Recommended Posts