Adobe turns evil

16 Jan 2005

Okay, so I just tried to download Acrobat Reader 7. I’ve got no reason to pay for the full product, as free alternatives suffice for all my PDF creation needs… maybe Abobe is getting upset and deciding to trash what was previously the best cross-platform document sharing format ever.

Well, whatever. I’m still using PDF documents, and probably will be for a while, but I’m going to rant about it anyway. So there’s an installer, right? Okay. Preferred method of installation: Evil Adobe Download manager. Option for normal download? Yup. Why didn’t I use it? Call me stupid or something… I’ll get to exactly why.

So last week some time I was at Steve’s office, and he said that Acrobat Reader 7 is loads faster than 6. I’m not sure if I started dancing then and there, but it was good to hear. Today, I bother to do something about it on this laptop (which, incidentally, has just had a long-overdue RAM upgrade, and still loads Acrobat 6 like crap), which involved going to the Adobe website and following the links, then filling out three dropdown menus to present me with more choices.

Language: English.
Operating System: Windows ME
Connection: Broadband

Wonderful, it’s offering to let me download Adobe Reader 6. Again. I know I’m running Windows ME and that’s a crime against humanity. Right now, I’d argue that Adobe download software and internal policy is a crime against humanity. Not only would it offer to let me download an old version of software, I also had my choice of spyware ridden toolbars and some crappy photo management software which they’re pimping like it’s actually making them money. Scary, no? The first hit is always free… no, I’m not a cynic. Never.

Josh trots off to Download.com to try and grab the latest Reader “illegally”, just for the hell of it, to see if it’ll work on this computer. Download.com, searches, finds Acrobat Reader, downloads Acrobat Reader, discovers it’s actually a crappy download stub (hey, I’m on snappy cable here, I don’t *do* checking file sizes!), which then proceeds to download (unannounced) three different pieces of software. “Ummmm.”

It finishes downloading these mysterious three components. Installer one launches. Yahoo! Toolbar? No thanks. Really, no thanks. No, really, take that toolbar away from me before I do something untoward with it. Crappy Adobe Photo management dru… err… software? No thanks. Really, no thanks. If I cared that much for your crappy software, I’d ask for it. As it stands, I’m perfectly happy with the most excellent Irfanview on Windows, and miscellaneous web-based photo management applications.

FINALLY. This is the part where I have the Acrobat installer itself run. But no. “I don’t like your Operating System, you anti-consumerist pig. Go grovelling to our buddies Microsoft and upgrade, quick smart. And buy some new hardware from some vendor that Microsoft approved so your new OS will run, okay? That’s right. In the meanwhile, we’ll punish you by making our reader software continue to run just as slow on your crappy four-year-old OS.”

Recommendation: Use plain text, or (if it’s absolutely necessary) valid (X)HTML, to send me documents. I’ll receive them in a better mood. (This comment endures only until I move into the new house, get my Linux desktop back, and can resume reading Adobe PDF files without even needing to see their product name. Ahh, Open Source.)

CSS that sucks

15 Jan 2005

A few days back, I was accused of writing CSS that sucked. That’s not to say it doesn’t work, only that it’s laid out like crap and no other rational human being could possibly follow it – or, when they did, wound up pulling faces like this:

After some attempt to refute this, it was eventually accepted as true — I don’t mean to write poorly formatted CSS, it just happens! Part of the reason for this is I just add stuff until it works, meaning to fix it sometime later on: but how do you “fix” CSS to make it neat?

What structure do people use for a textual description of visual style? At least some of my problem is that I try to follow a few different schools of layout thought simultaneously, trying to order things sequentially from top to bottom, and by semantic function, and by whatever else feels right at the time. Clearly, it wasn’t right.

If you’re a CSS guru genius who can write both functional styles that can also be deciphered by other humans, leave a pingback or comment!

The Phantom of the Opera and renovations

14 Jan 2005

I saw the movie The Phantom of the Opera today with Tori, which was kind of good… sort of… well, bits of it anyway. I haven’t seen the real thing though, so haven’t got much to compare the movie to — suffice to say it was fairly well produced, but the acting was varied.

Anyway, we were walking around after it and wound up going past the Town Hall arcade food court, which has had some interesting renovations over the last few weeks that I hadn’t noticed/known about ’til just now. Take a look:

Cool, huh?

Hi Bill…

14 Jan 2005

I just stumbled across this post on some weblog today, and found it amusing.

New logo for base10solutions.

13 Jan 2005

We’ve come up with a seriously cool new logo for base10solutions — and it’s not yet live. Stay tuned.