Microsoft switches Edge’s PDF reader to pay-to-play Adobe Acrobat Microsoft's Edge browser will be getting a significant facelift in the coming months, thanks to Adobe. The same week the giant software maker said it is bringing the hype-tastic ChatGPT AI tool to Edge (and Bing), it also announced it is replacing the fairly basic PDF reader currently built into the browser with a new one …
exactly
a few years ago (maybe 10) everybody had to use acrobat to read PDFs because there was no alternative.
then the Firefox folk realised that 99% of people jut want to look at their bank statement or theatre ticket with the minimum of fuss and they could build something in JS that could do that directly in the browser. Those 99% of people stopped using Acrobat because they had no need
now Microsoft and Adobe have "realised" that those people definitely can't live without Acrobat for some reason (presumably for the same reason they definitely can't live without Edge).
The Mozilla Javascript solution is generally available at this URL:
https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/
I have used it as an extension in Edge, where is was an option for me to view PDF attachments (the Edge PDF engine does not allow this).
The Javascript solution is likely more secure, and presents less of an attack surface. Adobe PDF has seen *so many security bugs* that I really do prefer something else.
So basically it’s just another upsell hook in Windows, which is increasingly just an ad-delivery framework.
(Sorry. I am still salty that on my one Windows 10 machine I can no longer remove the “Microsoft Rewards” advert on the Settings app, where Vivetool used to do it perfectly but is now broken. Funny how MS updates always do a great job of closing down mods like this that people create, but such a useless job of fixing real security flaws…)
I searched the registry (what a PITA) and found a reference to mictosoft's rewards program. Computer\HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1101357901-2249863195-1674030551-1001\SOFTWARE\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AppModel\Repository\Packages\Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost_10.0.19041.1263_neutral_neutral_cw5n1h2txyewy\Applications\Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy!App
I wonder if setting the default value to zero will do anything?
FYI - The only reason I upped to win10 from win7 was mictosoft's sycophants crippled their products sothey wouldn't work in win7 any more. And I never had any security problems with 7.
Don't get me wrong, i don't necessarily want perpetual updates for free, that's unfair to the developer(s). Any updates could be charged for legitimately (bugfixes, is a grey area, morally). Even MS used to get this, my copy of orifice 97 works just fine on windows 10 and most people can't tell that they're opening a .doc not a .docx, and there are free readers for .docx if i need to view such a proprietary format. (Stares at ofcom, really, a .xlsx instead of a simple csv for the abcde lists of area codes?
I still find it really odd that after using a Mac for years all the tools for creating and manipulating PDFs are built into the so.
I know some of the more advanced features that Adobe way you to pay for aren’t probably there. But I can create a pdf from just about any document editing app on the system and using the built in preview tool can reorder and edit pages in a pdf.
It has been like that since I started using a Mac over 10 years ago.
...create a pdf from just about any document editing app...
I don't think I can criticise LibreOffice on this. I've been producing business docs on it for many years (on Linux).
Granted, I'm not including "any document editing app" here, I'm assuming office type apps.
I'm amazed that people hug M$ proprietary formats and vendor lock-in for a fee. That makes no sense to me.
To be fair, the PDF tools that are the most important are built in to Windows too. Print to PDF is probably the most useful because you can save PDFs from any application that doesn't already support it, and they've had that in Windows, not Edge, so Adobe shouldn't get to poison that at least for now. It doesn't have a PDF editor built in like the Mac's Preview. Previous topics on PDF have indicated that others here like PDF a lot more than I do, so maybe this will make more sense to them.
You may need to get a bigger Internet connection for the data they BOTH grab from every user?
We dumped Adobe for exactly that reason, and all our work is now done on Serif's Affinity products. Took some time to adjust, but it works. I just have to stop them zooming in to a million to one, dropping an easter egg in a design and zoom out again. Just because you can (it's very, VERY easy with Affinity Designer) doesn't mean you have to, although the creativity is appreciated :).
Sometimes it's woth setting up a SPAN port and just watch with Wireshark what leaves the building from an idle system. Worth it.
Neither, but this is the other reason we stopped using Adobe: they have secretly acquired a font monopoly. Wherever they have bought a company, webfonts disappear, forcing people to use their equivalent of privacy busting Google fonts (I forgot the name of it now, but it means they get a hit of every browser downloading it).
Given what we do for a living, ANY data leak is deemed inacceptable so out it went and we still buy fonts and webfonts, or even have them made for us. As for web stats, we use a combination of things that run straight off server access.log and Matomo which works well. It's actually rather entertaining to see new Marketing droids realise that recommending the use of Google tags is not a career enhancing move :).
And like everything Microsoft of late, it's pushed out the door with zero testing.
What this doesn't point out, is the research team, only deals with fire fighting the issues AFTER THE FACT.
The high CPU issue in Photos, in Win10/Win11 has been an issue for months now. MS clearly haven't a clue how any of the legacy code works, and Adobe Acrobat is full of legacy code, they are just using the sticking plaster of sandboxing to attempt to contain the legacy code.
Note, it also sounds like a backdoor method of integrating Adobe's privacy slurping data analytics engine on every PC, combined with a MS Account.
If nothing else concerns you, this should.
It should also concern the UK's CMA (Competition and Markets Authority), they need to start acting NOW pre-emptively and not once all this is in place.
Microsoft are already slurping Phone Numbers, by locking people out of the Outlook Accounts, on the premise of 'suspicious behaviour'. Authorities need to test what the premise of this 'suspicious behaviour' is, and fine Microsoft, for forcing people to provide a phone number, when they have all details of the account including a recovery code.
>It should also concern the UK's CMA (Competition and Markets Authority), they need to start acting NOW pre-emptively and not once all this is in place.
It should also concern the EU - who have the bigger teeth.
There really isn't any reason why any PDF reader should not be able to be a plug-in replacement for Windows and Edge's PDF functionality, just need the API's publishing.
That would be even better for productivity, customers, competition and security.
You've clearly never used the Windows search, with everything passed through Edge+Bing. Where do you think a .pdf file result will open by default, from those search results?
Plus, try disabling (or harder, removing fully) Edge and Adobe Acrobat once installed.
A 'normal' software uninstall certainly doesn't remove all the Adobe Acrobat Reader DC references from the Windows registry.
Hence, the need for Adobe to also release a separate tool, Adobe Acrobat Cleaner tool.
(AdobeAcroCleaner_DC2021)
And as said, where is Adobe's Analytics Engine in all of this, is that getting installed?
That, to me, seems the whole reason to do this (I could be wrong), to get the Adobe Analytics Engine installed by the backdoor, under the radar of competition authorities.
Unfortunately this really isn't true. The only format that can compete with PDF for content and appearance is DjVu which is getting pushed to the sidelines more and more (even Internet Archive stopped using it). All the other formats either don't prioritise consistent appearance (HTML for instance) by default or at all, or they're too closely tied to their target platform (XPS, XML).
HTML is completely the opposite of the reason why we use PDF.
When creating many kinds of documents it is important that they look as designed, not something sort of similar that has been mangeld by a browser, javascript, adverts, extensions and god knows what else.
Designers are necessary. Creating a usable experience is important - you may be able to deal with things not looking the same all the time, but a lot of people cannot. All sorts of disabilities exist, and consistency of design is incredibly useful to many.
Not to mention simple productivity - knowing your document/form is going to be the same on every system it is opened will allow much improved productivity - as you can provide support/guidance for it easily.
Yes and no. The world increasingly runs on HTML and people have got very used to consuming it, even though it looks different on different devices. Even those with disabilities - and, in some cases, particularly those with disabilities as many tools exist to make HTML consumable as it is so essential to modern life.
Nowadays PDF really should be limited to printed documents, where layout is, indeed, critical.
You're not that far off... how about 2 500cid 460 hp Caddy V8s (ideally not used simultaneously...)
I mean... PDF is hard to work with (from a developer perspective), it's stuck to one format (paper) and can't re-flow on other mediums (like HTML.
OK, I get that some docs need to be read-only or preserve the A4 format, but only some, not all. Why do we have to pay to edit, sign or save to other format?
Yeah, I know there are niche tools to do all that for free, but the fact that they're niche proves the point.
How's that we rely on a weird document format and pay Adobe for features that are standard and free in order file formats and tools? How's that many other companies tried to replace PDF (Microsoft comes to mind, I forgot their file extension, was around Windows Vista) and none managed to do it?
Think of this file format, several files in a zip (similar to docx): one HTML for the content, one CSS for styling, one XML with attributes to indicate if the doc is strictly A4 or can be displayed on any medium, then signatures, hashes and certificates to allow checking how original the doc is, packed together in one file. Viewers and editors for HTML are easy to build for any platform (due to open source efforts like Chromium), the doc itself would be easy to read and work with on servers, would allow read-write fields to be completed by other people... Everything PDF does and more.
Why is that nobody managed to get rid of PDF and Adobe? What is it so special and complicated that we still depend on Adobe?
"I would like to shake the hand of the man who first decided that e-mail clients should slice, dice and run arbitrary programs. Then I'd like to stir, blend and puree his hand."
-- J. D. Baldwin in the Monastery (an ASR comment about 20 years ago)
This post has been deleted by its author
> Why do we have to pay to edit, sign or save to other format?
Your choice whether you pay or use the free toolsets such as PDF24, and if MS provide it for free then you are paying for it in some other way.
> How's that many other companies tried to replace PDF (Microsoft comes to mind, I forgot their file extension, was around Windows Vista) and none managed to do it?
They were late to the party and were application and platform specific...
>Think of this file format...
Reinvent the wheel if you want to, but expect your efforts to go the same way as MS with XPS etc. ...
>Why is that nobody managed to get rid of PDF and Adobe?
PDF solved a real-world problem, Adobe own a lot of fonts and Postscript, naturally with PS v3 there is a direct mapping between PDF and PS, if you want something printed (by a third-party) exactly how you designed it then your best bet is to use Adobe fonts...
But more simply, for similar reasons as to why we are still using the QWER keyboard, TCP/IP, Unix like OS's/commands...
>What is it so special and complicated that we still depend on Adobe?
Well you could simply replace Adobe with: Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, SAP, etc. and the question would still be valid.
Significantly Adobe relinquished proprietary status of PDF to ANSI for ISO standardization. From v1.7 onwards it's an ISO standard. Any effort to displace PDF would need to be ISO from "go", as well as be better overall, and that's a lot of work for developers to pay for to then "just give it away".
Then there's all the tools for creating/editing/viewing across all of the platforms on which it's used.
Companies would either need to run parallel document systems, PDF + New Kid on the Block, or convert to NKotB. Not cheap, and a potential risk of losing information (?in a legal doc, nah). That's a lot of proof reading.
PDF has evolved to get where it is, not been created over night.
- "Think of this file format, several files in a zip (similar to docx): one HTML for the content, one CSS for styling, one XML with attributes to indicate if the doc is strictly A4 or can be displayed on any medium, then signatures, hashes and certificates to allow checking how original the doc is, packed together in one file. Viewers and editors for HTML are easy to build for any platform (due to open source efforts like Chromium), the doc itself would be easy to read and work with on servers, would allow read-write fields to be completed by other people... Everything PDF does and more."
That's a really complex solution and adds a lot overhead. Think about the people that need a designed document and want to make it available to the masses who you have to assume have no knowledge of technology. The reason PDF is still around is it's simplicity to deliver something that is readable by Joe/Jane Public. We can spit out any document whether it's designed or a simple word doc straight into PDF format and make it available to the public in a matter of minutes. That saves a lot of taxpayer money (through time mostly) in public sector, that same sector is already paying for O365 and probably Creative Suite for maximum compatibility and efficiency.
The reason PDF is still around is it's simplicity to deliver something that is readable by Joe/Jane Public.
...readable by some of Joe/Jane Public.
The world has changed. HTML is the format that everyone can read - and is where the development effort goes on tools to improve disability access, translation, machine learning, etc.
PDF did a great job for a long time, but it isn't the future. The future is HTML-based (despite all its faults). PDF will gradually become just a niche format for handling paper.
You've never worked in publishing then? It's ubiquitous there and they often use huge PDFs, we used PDF as single format when i published my first book about 3 years ago. A huge 900MB PDF with so much rich data, we uploaded to the printers out in Romania and then we went over. They ran off some test sheets, we checked them and and then they did the whole 10k print run, all from a single PDF document. No extra text, images, add ons, bolt ons and anything needed to be handed over.
My editor is not a techie but he's worked in publishing for 20+ years and he works in PDF all the time as he knows exactly what he's getting, there's almost no corrections by the printers and when you're in the cutthroat dead-tree printing business you cannot waste money, time or resources, PDF means everyone knows what they're getting.
> users will see an Adobe brand mark in the bottom corner of the PDF view
All the time? How big??
Because of its letter-format bias, Adobe probably expects blank margins. But I work a lot (too darn much?) with circuit diagrams. Some with classic conventions and some untutored drafters going all the way to the edge. If I lose a part or a port behind a big red A I will be grumped.
>You sound like you’ve never experienced Adobe’s lovely well designed and crafted software before
The difference is between Acrobat Reader as was and the modern incarnation. Reader as was, was just a good PDF reader, it did not have pretensions to be Adobe Acrobat.
In more recent years, Reader has effectively become a trial version of Acrobat with only the Reader functionality provided for free, click on anything else and you get the sales pitch.
Reader DC has seen even the most basic functionality nerfed. I vaguely recall even rotating the page was nobbled, the last time I tried to use it (on a work PC with mandated installations)0.
No I don't want a reader premium subscription, or the full version of Acrobat. I never did.
Chrome can render PDFs. It's not greatest tool for the job but I at least have access to it. Home use Firefox has taken over. And if a standalone reader is desired over a browser, SumatraPDF (was?) excellent - assuming it hasn't succumbed to bloat too.
"And both companies have changed little in this behavior over the last 20 years."
Not sure that's true - I'd have said they've got worse, particularly MS. They've largely given up on proper testing, push (badly-tested) updates out all the time rather than on a clear schedule, and slurp vastly more data all the time.
Adobe meanwhile are one of the leading pioneers of subscription-only software, among other things.
You seem to be ignoring the constant nag screes for Adobe subscriptions that will inevitably follow. Tried using regular Acrobat Reader lately? There are constant popups showing features and when you click on them it takes you to the subscription page. It's a never ending sea of upsell.
Plus of course you now have Adobe software forcibly installed by default on your windows machine and hoovering up every piece of personal data imaginable whether you view PDFs in Edge or not.
I suppose one feature this'll add, there's pdf forms where they can be filled out and signed. But not with pdf.js (at least I think not?) As much as I'm not a big fan of Adobe, if you are using Win10 or 11 and worrying about telemetry, well, that ship has sailed. Use Linux if you don't want to have info phoned home.
On vanilla, nothing-added MacOS:
1 - open PDF;
2 - click on either "Edit" or "Form filling toolbar";
3 - click on signature and either:
- choose one you made earlier
- pick a device (iPad or iPhone) that you want to create a signature on (in case of an iPad you can use the Apple pen as well);
4 - select the freshly made signature you just added and place/size it where you need it;
5 - save the PDF, now enhanced with your signature.
I am VERY grateful for this feature as I presently have to deal with banking arrangements which means I have to work through document bundles close to a 100 pages with tens of signatures and lots of pages that need an initial (and yes, I read them first :) ). The fact that it's built in came as a welcome surprise.
Me being me I zap the recorded signatures afterwards, a tad OTT as I have filevault enabled and a decent password, but I believe in maintaining good habits (that way you do things right even when you're not quite awake yet :) ).
I was starting to get weird, bizarre thoughts about trying out Edge, but this decision has brought me back to my senses. Thanks for that.
No, seriously, why anyone at Microsoft would think that integrating what is widely considered horrific bloatware into their browser is beyond me.
“Bringing Adobe and Microsoft closer together is good for productivity and good for customers,”
No it isn’t!!!
In fact I would go so far as to say that’s utter bollocks. Neither MS or (especially) Adobe have ever EVER produced a decent piece if software. Adobe is probably worse - so bad it’s almost funny
"Adobe's PDF technology in Microsoft Edge means users will have fast and secure access to critical digital document capabilities." *
^^- This guy knows how to keep his job!
and he's thinking...
"Adobe's PDF technology in Microsoft Edge means nothing to me, I gotta keep writing this drivel before some AI does it for me." ...fast and secure access to critical digital document capabilities? It sounds like is already being done.
*Bingo! I win BS Bingo!
I've always thought that Adobe products were largely regarded as the second-most obvious attack vector for hackers, just behind password = "password".
Adobe is that jovial consultant who stinks of cologne, wears suits that cost a years salary, and doesn't even both with buzzwords. They let the spray-on tan and golf membership do all the talking. And, like their software, they are about 12 time the size they should be, but clearly working with all their might to look trim.
Well, the old versions of Photoshop were. I stopped at about 6.0.
PDF is really useful being an open standard, Acrobat not so much. Other document authoring standards available, not least LaTeX; for which there still isn't a commercial grade editor IMO.
How many times have you written a 30-page policy in MS Word and screamed at the formatting tools doing Word's own thing as opposed to what the user wants? (Or worse, had to pick up a template made by someone else and unpick the badly applied rules).
PDF, LaTeX or an equivalent solution are more or less the only way to escape that hell in finished documents.
If you want to cut it in the world of paid photography, Lightroom/Photoshop are the only serious game in town. The second someone else covers all the features of PS including plugins and tools, then Adobe is screwed. Don't give me GIMP, i've tried it and while it's bloody good, I'm afraid in the photography world where you need to teach others how to shoot and edit images to a high level, you know you need to teach one manager and one editor only else you won't be teaching photography for much longer.
I think Affinity's products are definitely now giving Photoshop a run for its money.
Speaking of money, they are MASSIVELY cheaper too. As a matter of fact, they're so cheap we tend to install all three as standard on machines. Doing that with Adobe would give the bookkepers a heart attack.
All the comments in this section make me laugh. People outright stating that MS and Adobe have never made good software.
Of course. That's why both companies are effectively kings of their respective industries. No good software there.
You might not like their software. You might think they make too many mistakes during their releases, with bugs and security holes, but the people that use their software seem to like it - else someone else would've come along and unseated both of them.
Which products succeed and which fail often has little to do with whether or not they are the best in the market. There are many other factors at play, and once a company acquires a sufficiently large share of a particular market they have to do something really inept to lose it. Only clear example of that which I can think of in the business software world is Symantec, whose Backup Exec was the market leader in server backup software for small-medium buisnesses. A spectacularly bad new version, follwed by failing to adapt quickly enough on the move from physical to virtual servers, pretty much wiped them out in this market as Veeam swooped in with a product specifically designed for virtualised infrastructures.
I'd say your analysis is partly right, but partly wrong.
Look at something like search. Google created a significantly better system and everyone jumped ship. This wasn't ineptitude of the market leaders, but being outclassed.
Same with Chrome vs other browsers.
Same with Apple and its iPhone vs other phones.
Spotify and streaming audio vs iTunes downloads, iTunes downloads vs CDs.
These are "inept" moves by existing companies, but disruption in the market. It just so happens there hasn't been anyone to come along and disrupt the markets Adobe and Microsoft are in.
Google search - yes, OK, accepted
But Chrome? Well, it's better than IE but Firefox remains better than either of them.
iPhone - it's OK, but its success was largely due to the brand following and the marketing capability to push it, due to the company's size. The OS and hardware isn't really any better these days than a comparable model from Samsung. And there wasn't much of a smartphone market to disrupt before the iPhone - it was a new market, although it can certainly be said that the market leaders in basic handsets didn't adapt quickly enough and hence lost their position. And Blackberry, who had the closest equivalent market in the business world, definitely didn't move quickly enough.
But in all the above cases the change was relatively easy to make. Shifting away from MS operating systems and office software would be vastly more difficult. Adobe less so, but that's got such a large proportion of the market that it would take something major to change that. Innovation isn't likely to be the driver in this case, as there aren't really any major changes likely in this field.
"But Chrome? Well, it's better than IE but Firefox remains better than either of them."
Disagree. There's a reason it's the least relevant browser today, mostly thanks due to a series of stupid decisions by Mozilla.
It's great that it exists, but I only use it if the alternative is Edge.
"iPhone - it's OK, but its success was largely due to the brand following and the marketing capability to push it, due to the company's size. The OS and hardware isn't really any better these days than a comparable model from Samsung. "
Not true. Apple still has the by far fastest smartphone SoCs, and iPhone cameras have always been better than anything Samsung ever came up with (the only real competitor in this area is Google's Pixel).
All iPhones also get 5+ years of OS updates while Samsung doesn't even bother to keep all its models abreast with security updates beyond 3 years.
"And there wasn't much of a smartphone market to disrupt before the iPhone - it was a new market"
Nonsense - smartphones existed long before the first iPhone, going back to Nokia's original Communicator. There literally have been dozens of Windows Mobile and Symbian based smartphones long before the first iPhone came out, including installable apps and app stores.
"But in all the above cases the change was relatively easy to make. Shifting away from MS operating systems and office software would be vastly more difficult."
Yes, mostly because it would require businesses to stop enslaving themselves to a large vendor with one of the worst track records in security and reliability. It would also mean that those making decisions would have to educate themselves about the alternatives and the long-term costs and implications of their decisions, instead of focusing on the next quarter.
There are lots of businesses which already function without Microsoft products. And they do just fine without Windows, MS Office and MS365.
"Disagree. There's a reason it's the least relevant browser today, mostly thanks due to a series of stupid decisions by Mozilla."
Mozilla may not have helped, but Google's massive push to get it onto every machine via prompts in search results was clearly the main factor.
"Nonsense - smartphones existed long before the first iPhone, going back to Nokia's original Communicator. "
Sure, they existed, but they were very much a niche thing. The iPhone was the first to really make an impression on the consumer market.
"There are lots of businesses which already function without Microsoft products. And they do just fine without Windows, MS Office and MS365."
Would be interesting to see some stats on the proportion, size and area of business these operate in. Suspect it will be in specific niches.
The iPhone was the first to really make an impression on the consumer market.
That was true in North America, but only in North America. And North America was a couple of years behind the rest of the world, where Nokia was the first to make an impression, and Microsoft second. Both subsequently lost out to Apple and Google, of course.
"iPhone cameras have always been better than anything Samsung ever came up with (the only real competitor in this area is Google's Pixel)."
With all due respect Sir you have no idea what you are talking about. iPhone cameras are rubbish, and Google's Pixel is not much better. A years-old P30 pro Huawei will wipe the floor with both of them.
There are many manufacturers making massive strides in phone cameras (check out DXO if you want to see some actual cutting edge ones), but Apple isn't one of them. As usual they are behind the curve adding years-old technology and marketing it from the rooftops as if they just invented something new.
Commercial success sometimes mean nothing.
The General, the silent movie starring Buster Keaton, at its time was a flop so big that cost him not only his wealth but his artistic freedom as well: studios wanted the last word to prevent running too high on expenses.
Nowadays, The General is considered a masterpiece and one of the best silent movie films ever.
And that's without even putting a foot on monopolistic practices.
That's why both companies are effectively kings of their respective industries. No good software there.
You may want to look into the history of Microsoft and what they got up to since the days of MS-DOS. It is NOT a story of innovation, nd it even shows the dodgy side of the Bill Gates foundation.
The simplest evidence of that is the current state of their products.
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