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Time for Adobe to go back to a PDF viewer ?
Saturday, 30 October 2010 12:07 pmIs it time that Adobe went back to providing a PDF viewer ? They currently provide Adobe Reader which shows not just PDFs but runs JavaScript too and (unless you have the old but still supported - on some systems - version 8 reader) Flash, so that you can view a PDF file which has bits of Flash in it too. They also provide a separate Flash Player which does what is says on the tin.
According to a recent Adobe security advisory there is security hole in both Adobe Reader and Flash Player, and a wild exploit attacking Adobe Reader but not Flash Player. So they plan to release a fix for Flash Player, which isn't being attacked, by Nov 9, and for Adobe Reader, which is, in the week starting Nov 15. Why not the other way around ?
They also say that Adobe Reader 8 does not have this security hole.
One of the major selling points for Adobe Reader 9 is that it lets you view PDFs with Flash inside. Of all the PDF files I have seen, exactly two contained Flash. One was from Adobe and the other one was a brochure which would have been much better rewritten not to include the Flash.
By my count this is the third security hole in Adobe Reader caused by bugs in the Flash code.
I can see that Adobe want to push Flash as hard as they can (because they make more money from tools for writing Flash than PDFs) but three critical holes in a product caused by a feature that hardly anyone uses (a feature for which they also provide a dedicated tool) which has makes me wonder whether it is time to revert to a PDF-only reader.
Or has everyone else given up on Adobe's PDF viewer and switched to one of the alternatives (Evince, Foxit, Sumatra, GhostView, Google or a couple of dozen others) ?
According to a recent Adobe security advisory there is security hole in both Adobe Reader and Flash Player, and a wild exploit attacking Adobe Reader but not Flash Player. So they plan to release a fix for Flash Player, which isn't being attacked, by Nov 9, and for Adobe Reader, which is, in the week starting Nov 15. Why not the other way around ?
They also say that Adobe Reader 8 does not have this security hole.
One of the major selling points for Adobe Reader 9 is that it lets you view PDFs with Flash inside. Of all the PDF files I have seen, exactly two contained Flash. One was from Adobe and the other one was a brochure which would have been much better rewritten not to include the Flash.
By my count this is the third security hole in Adobe Reader caused by bugs in the Flash code.
I can see that Adobe want to push Flash as hard as they can (because they make more money from tools for writing Flash than PDFs) but three critical holes in a product caused by a feature that hardly anyone uses (a feature for which they also provide a dedicated tool) which has makes me wonder whether it is time to revert to a PDF-only reader.
Or has everyone else given up on Adobe's PDF viewer and switched to one of the alternatives (Evince, Foxit, Sumatra, GhostView, Google or a couple of dozen others) ?
