4 ms·

PDF's are not inherently insecure. It's just that Adobe Reader is crap (and any sane person would have switched to a better option a long time ago).

ronnier 17y ago
Can you list one of those options?
- CrLf 17y ago
  Foxit Reader if you are on Windows, Preview if you're on a Mac, evince if you're on Linux. I personally do not use Adobe Reader on any platform. I found the alternatives to be both leaner and not lacking any relevant features.
  - tesseract 17y ago
    Lately Foxit has been feeling even slower and more bloated than the current Adobe Reader, at least on my setup. I'm pretty happy with SumatraPDF, although it is not terribly featureful so I have Adobe Reader installed as well.
  - ximeng 17y ago
    I went back to Adobe after finding Foxit failed to lay out some PDFs correctly (legibly).
- morbidkk 17y ago
  sumatra PDF is also a better option
  - digibri 17y ago
    I also use SumatraPDF and find it excellent.
    - joe_bleau 17y ago
      I tried it yesterday, and I was horribly disappointed. Printing a 13 page document took so long (>30s) that I kept killed the process, thinking it had hung. Acrobat 5.something ripped and spooled the same document in maybe a second.
swombat 17y ago
I don't use Reader, as far as I can... unfortunately, some PDF features are not well supported by other clients - for example, comments/mark-up doesn't seem to show up in Preview, usually. Is there a properly full-featured PDF viewer for Mac that isn't from Adobe?
- wanderr 17y ago
  There are a bunch of alternative PDF readers, I don't know if they are all full featured but I have never run into something that didn't work for me in Sumatra PDF or Foxit Reader. Lifehacker did a roundup a while ago of PDF reader alternatives: http://lifehacker.com/5328211/five-best-pdf-readers http://lifehacker.com/5328211/five-best-pdf-readers
rythie 17y ago
Well is that really true? They've bundled loads of features into the format, the other readers might be safer but only because they don't support those features and they will try to add them at some point. Also PDF is based on postscript which is programming language. It's sufficiently complex that's is never going to be very secure, and after all the main problem with Office documents was Macros.

ronnier 17y ago

Can you list one of those options?

CrLf 17y ago
Foxit Reader if you are on Windows, Preview if you're on a Mac, evince if you're on Linux. I personally do not use Adobe Reader on any platform. I found the alternatives to be both leaner and not lacking any relevant features.
- tesseract 17y ago
  Lately Foxit has been feeling even slower and more bloated than the current Adobe Reader, at least on my setup. I'm pretty happy with SumatraPDF, although it is not terribly featureful so I have Adobe Reader installed as well.
- ximeng 17y ago
  I went back to Adobe after finding Foxit failed to lay out some PDFs correctly (legibly).
morbidkk 17y ago
sumatra PDF is also a better option
- digibri 17y ago
  I also use SumatraPDF and find it excellent.
  - joe_bleau 17y ago
    I tried it yesterday, and I was horribly disappointed. Printing a 13 page document took so long (>30s) that I kept killed the process, thinking it had hung. Acrobat 5.something ripped and spooled the same document in maybe a second.

swombat 17y ago

I don't use Reader, as far as I can... unfortunately, some PDF features are not well supported by other clients - for example, comments/mark-up doesn't seem to show up in Preview, usually. Is there a properly full-featured PDF viewer for Mac that isn't from Adobe?

wanderr 17y ago
There are a bunch of alternative PDF readers, I don't know if they are all full featured but I have never run into something that didn't work for me in Sumatra PDF or Foxit Reader. Lifehacker did a roundup a while ago of PDF reader alternatives: http://lifehacker.com/5328211/five-best-pdf-readers http://lifehacker.com/5328211/five-best-pdf-readers

rythie 17y ago

Well is that really true? They've bundled loads of features into the format, the other readers might be safer but only because they don't support those features and they will try to add them at some point. Also PDF is based on postscript which is programming language. It's sufficiently complex that's is never going to be very secure, and after all the main problem with Office documents was Macros.