That’s sarcasm in the title before you get too excited and think that Adobe did something revolutionary with the new Reader. I have spent a lot of time preparing a great article for tomorrow morning so my brain is starting to wither away to nothing (just to warn you before reading this article) ;)
Anyhow, back on topic. The new version 8 is sure to please any Adobe Reader enthusiast out there (are there any of those people?). Here are some of the things that you can do with this version:
- Maximized work area – View PDFs in a new visual design for the work area, navigation pane, and toolbars. User interface elements have been removed to maximize space.
- Customizable toolbars – Easily hide or show individual tools by right-clicking/Control-clicking a toolbar, or use the More Tools dialog box to customize all your toolbars.
- Shared reviews – Participate in a shared review. Comments are stored on a central server, allowing all participants to see comments in real time.
- Commenting and markup enhancements – View and accurately place callout and cloud markups as you apply them. The callout leader automatically moves as you position the callout. Selected comments are highlighted for easier visibility when zoomed out. Rotate stamps, and select all tools from a single, integrated toolbar.
- Booklet printing – Print pages as a simple booklet, for example, 2-up, saddle-stitched.
- 2D Measurement tool enhancements – Measurement recalculated if start or end point moved. Measurements snap to lines, intersections, or corners.
That’s about everything from their What’s New page that seems halfway noteworthy. Honestly, they still have a long ways to go to match what Foxit Reader offers. I’m not sure why they keep throwing more and more features into Adobe Reader when all it does is make it slower. If they are going to implement things that most people will never use, and never understand, then they should at least provide options to disable those features. The only thing that Adobe Reader does right is make it possible to open PDF’s from within a browser. Heck, I don’t even like that feature though because it seems like my browser crashes most of the time when using it. Oh well…there is always version 9 right? 
Yes, once again Adobe leaves Linux behind. Adobe Flash9 is now in beta for Linux, but isn’t going to be ready until late 1st Qtr 2007. And now I wonder how long they’ll wait to update Reader for Linux.
Thankfully there are open source alternatives.
Just because you don’t have a use for any of the new features doesn’t mean that those features are stupid. If your workflow included more use of PDF, than just reading files on the net, then you might find a little more value in the new version. I think the saddle-stitch booklet printing feature sounds pretty useful – does Foxit have it yet?
Downloaded and installed, one functionality which is improved drastically is “Find” , now its much more easier to search for a word in the document. Also the software is loading much faster than the previous versions.
But I still prefer Foxit
I’ll still stick onto Foxit
I think the biggest improvement is that it opens faster and the process doesn’t remain running after you exit the reader. These two items were the biggest problems to me.
When I use Linux I actually never use Adobe Reader because there is always something adequate that comes with the operating system.
I didn’t refer to any of the features as “stupid” and the article, like all others on the site, are purely my opinion. Honestly though, what percentage of users are going to use the new features? Sure some of the more tech-savvy people might think to look around for new things but the average person is going to open up a PDF and hit the print button.
Yeah, I give them credit that it does open faster but when I reviewed the pre-release version I think it had to pre-load the process when Windows started.
True, you did not claim the new Reader was “stupid” but the implication that Adobe need not bother with new releases if YOU are not getting anything out of them seems a little short-sighted.
I was surprised at how quickly Reader 8 loads up though. I bet they’ve gotten the message from the recent blog pieces everywhere about the reducing the load time.
The annoyance I’ve had with Reader 7, and I think it’s still there in Reader 8, is that making small changes to the preferences requires the installer program to run. One thing I disliked a lot about 7 was that it’d insist that I reboot my machine when upgrading to a new version. As if Reader was THAT important.
It was these silly things, more than the load time, that made me more interested in Foxit.
A while back my [ffextensionguru.wordpress.com] post was the most read in my blog. That was until Firefox 2 was released…
yeah foxit is probably the lightest and fastest program to open and view pdfs. BUT definitely not for printing pdfs!! Adobe is still great and fast for loading pages to your printer, something that foxit might never achieve. Those people who think that foxit is the best, clearly, does not print pdfs at all. I was one of those people, once.