The New Hotness

Maybe I’m misusing Adobe Reader, but I’ve always thought of it as a program that displays PDF files. In my case, that means data sheets for various & sundry electronic parts: I carefully squirrel both PDFs and parts away, having learned that physical parts can outlast both datasheets and company websites.

So I open quite a few PDFs that reside on my file server in the basement.

With that in mind, what’s missing from this row of toolbar icons?

Go ahead, take your time…

Hint: the only active button lets you “start an Acrobat Connect meeting and share documents”.

This has been true for the last few versions; the Official Ubuntu Linux Version seems to be stuck at 8.1-ish. Let’s jump ahead a bit, fetch 9.3 directly from the Adobe download page, and install it:

Now I can not only “Share documents and collaborate live within PDF documents”, but also “Click to create PDF using Acrobat.com”.

What I can’t do is open a PDF file from disk by just clicking a button. That rarely used function is relegated to the File pulldown menu and, for those of us who can touch-type fairly well, hidden behind the arcane Ctrl-O keyboard chord.

Reconfiguring the toolbar is a few minutes of clickety-click action, but it seems odd to me that none of the focus group participants suggested putting an Open File button on the toolbar.

Although I never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity, this continuing design decision does seem to require forethought.