Adobe Acrobat Toolbar Worse than Malware?

Phr3n3tik writes "Adobe Acrobat has long included a toolbar plugin to automate PDF Making from Office Products. Those who found the toolbar an eyesore, or just used it infrequently could always hide it from view. Not so in their new versions, (6, and 7 apparently.) Their new take on the PDFMaker toolbar is getting some users riled up, since it is harder to Move/Hide/Delete/Uninstall this new toolbar than many forms of malware!"

Comments

Versions

[AzBats]

I'm trying to stick with 5 since it works and the other versions are getting too feature rich.

OS X

[Mrs. Grundy]

One of the nicest features of OS X is the ability to turn just about any darn thing into a PDF. Rather than spend the money on this just go out and buy a Mac. Of course you can't turn this feature off in OS X, so maybe my OS is malware too.

Re:OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

For Windows just install the free Ghostscript plus CuteWriter.

Re:OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX's PDF printing ability doesn't let you recompress the graphics to fit the target. So if you have a word document with a tremendous tiff image in it, you get a tremendous PDF with the full-resolution tiff.

With Acrobat, you can say "all images 150 dpi" (or whatever), and it will appropriately recompress them in the final pdf. The OSX pdf is great, but it's the tweaking that's the reason I stick with Acrobat.

Re:OS X

[nunchux]

Acrobat does have features that the "print" funtion doesn't. Lots of them, actually. One that I use frequently is the ability to merge many small documents in a binder to create a larger PDF. It's a clunky program, far from intuitive and a bit of a pain in the ass to use but Acrobat is essential for creating professional PDFs.

Also, OSX PDFs aren't print quality... They're low resolution and the colors get wacky. If you're dealing with graphics that are going to be printed you need to export the PDF from Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark etc., not simply hit the "print" button.

Not that OSX PDF creation isn't a Godsend... I use it all the time, for example it's a great way to save a web page. But it doesn't replace the higher-end document creation programs.

Worse than malware?

[s4m7]

How can you tell in the MS office suite? The whole thing's got so many sliding panels, animated dogs saying "it looks like you're trying to get some work done." and other crap too numerous to list... I can't imagine one more toolbar being noticable.

If you chose to install it...

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

I guess youre stuck with it.

On the other hand, it really shouldn't be this difficult to remove valid programs - MS should really step in here and mandate a total-removal tool. Something that wipes ALL THE BLOODY FILES and icons from the HDD.

Of course, unless its IE, MS has never really believed in standards for the good of the end user - just for the good of the bottom line (WMA anyone???)

Adobe or Microsoft?

[lynx_user_abroad]

Why should Adobe be held to any different standard than Microsoft? If we've decided that Microsoft can't (at least in the U.S.) be forced to remove IE from Windows (even after they have been proven to posess market "monopoly" power) then why should we now demand that an "integral part of Adobe's product" be removable, hidable or whatever.

Or maybe it was a mistake to allow Microsoft to get away with that?

Re:Version 5

[Yankel]

That's because Adobe is trying to make PDF the be-all-and-end-all of document formats -- when it's only useful as a common format for printing.

Do we really need a PDF document to display flash, sound, full motion video, and act like a webpage?

Re:That is a kind of malware

[fupeg]

So like Internet Explorer for example?

Re:Adobe-Yahoo customer apathy connection

[NormAtHome]

Yep, saw that... if you're not paying attention after the Adobe downloader finishes getting the three different install files (Adobe Photo Album, Yahoo Toolbar and of course the Acrobat Reader) and you answer Yes suddenly you've got stuff you never wanted or needed on your system and it's hard to get rid of.

Someone else mentioned that Acrobat products after 5 have sucked bad and from what I've seen I'd have to agree.

This is really getting out of hand, next thing you know there'll be sneakwrap / EULA crap saying as a condition of using "our" software you must install our adware / spyware / malware so that you can be bombarded by advertising while we monitor what you do with our software on your computer.. oh and by the way by installing our software you're computer now belongs to us..

Adobe Reader v7.0 for Linux/UNIX

[antdude]

If you guys didn't know, Adobe released its Reader v7.0 for Linux/Unix recently:

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/unix/7x/7.0 /e nu/

I don't think this port has the toolbar though. I don't remember and cannot check from work.

OT: Kinkos Internet Policy

[Pfhorrest]

Bad taste to follow up to one's own post, and getting off the topic of PDFs, but it might be interesting to note for anyone who likes to send files to themselves over the net as I do:

Apparently Kinkos computer policy is to universally ban any directory listings (like "http://www.localisp.com/~someuser/transferfiles/" , with no index.html in there) or direct links to PDFs (possibly other files) not referred from an HTML page (like typing "http://www.localisp.com/~someuser/transferfiles/m ypaper.pdf" directly into the address bar). So my usual strategy of sending things to myself through my own webspace doesn't work if I want to print something from a Kinkos.

Zapping the toolbar in OS.X

[Savage-Rabbit]

Nice as the Print to PDF feature in OS.X is there are a few things it can't do that Adobe can. Another problem that I have heard people gripe about who use Adobe Acrobat alot is that the OS.X PDF functionality lags a little behind the Acrobat suite in terms of features. That means you sometimes have trouble with files you get sent from people running the latest Acrobat suite. I dont use PDF's often enough to be irritated by this but I know some people who use Adobe products because of it.

If you have any trouble with this bar the thing to do (Worked for me on Adobe Acrob at 6.0 for Mac) is:

YourMac$ cd /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Startup

or where ever else you installe Office there are three subfolderst there.

$ ls
Excel PowerPoint Word

each directory contains a file name

PDFMaker.[xla|ppa|dot]

Delete those files and you are rid of the damn toolbar. The only problem is that the next time you start Adobe Acrobat you get a nag screen stating that Acrobat needs to make repairs. No matter how I try to opt out of the damn repair Acrobat still re-creates those files. Just for kicks I tried to refuse Acrobat write permission to those three directories but it just refused to start which I thought was rather funny. After that I deleted the damn thing (aka Adobe Acrobat Professional) and have yet to regret it.

Re:Here's how to turn it off:

[Anonymous Coward]

I know RTFA is not a habit of \. readers, but this is talking about a toolbar within MS Office, not within Adobe Reader.

Re:Simple answer:

[MerlinTheWizard]

I agree that it's not a decent software distribution practice, but it still sounds simple enough for me. The fact that Adobe is trying to "force" people to use their toolbar is pretty obvious. Then again, there are other ways of producing PDF files than using Acrobat. I'm not sure that toolbar issue justified a whole Slashdot article comparing it to malware and worse.

Re:Free PDF printer driver, forget Adobe malware

[imrec]

I'm surprise nobody mentioned THIS yet
pdfcreator
Been using it for years
Only "cost" is that it doesn't give me a DRMed pdf file when I print a DRMed pdf!! Whoops!

Try this

[zenray]

This works for us to get rid of the PDF icons in Office 2003. Configure Outlook to use Word as the editor of your e-mail. Start Outlook - this pre-loads word for e-mail editing. Start Word -- the PDF icons are gone!!

How to remove from Outlook 2003

[Beatlebum]

Right click on toobar, and uncheck "PDFMaker 7.0".

What's the big deal?

Re:Print-to-PDF is an unexpected feature

[Buran]

It's not a lie to answer no to this question; you 'got it' from your own head, didn't you? Where you get something and where you store something aren't really the same. I store my car in my garage. Did I get my car from my garage? No; I got it from a Volkswagen dealer. If asked where I got my car from, I state the dealership's name. If I answered 'My garage', people would look at me funny and ask if I built it myself like in the Johnny Cash song 'One Piece At A Time' ... which I didn't. (I'm not THAT good!)