• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
0

DE: A Real Step Backwards

New Here ,
Jun 28, 2008 Jun 28, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

This software is a real step backwards from Adobe Reader 7 - when it comes to ebooks. I've never seen an upgrade go so backwards. I guess adobe is hoping to quickly get out of this particular business.

With ebooks in Reader 7, I could:

*underline text
*highlight text
*add notes
*put a copy of books on my cell phone PDA

With this awful software I can't do any of those things. And how useless are books that you can't even underline in!? I mean the whole reason to have electronic books is that you can underline and add notes to that you can later search on. That's what makes these so advantageous over real books. But all that functionality has been taken out of this stupid Digital Editions software.

You pay ebooks.com MORE for an ebook than you can get the real book for on amazon and they have far less functionality. You can't even take notes! And the book won't be usable when the next edition of the software comes out.

All those books I bought (hundreds of dollars worth) are now totally worthless and unusable. I can't read any of them now.

I highly caution anyone when thinking about buying ebooks in this format. ADOBE MAY OR MAY NOT MAKE YOUR BOOKS READABLE IN THE NEXT VERSION!

This is a very dangerous way to buy ebooks. I'm so pissed that I paid FULL PRICE with ebooks.com to buy electronic books that only lasted a few months. Now all that money is wasted. When I complain to them they just say "Hey, it's not our fault... talk to Adobe."

Views

1.6K

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guest
Jun 29, 2008 Jun 29, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

With ADE you can add notes and highlight text, by selecting a piece of text and then doing one of:
- Selecting "Add Bookmark" from the Reading menu
- Clicking on the "Add Bookmark" button
- Using the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-B (Windows), Cmd-B (Mac)

Underlining is not currently supported.

We are currently working on device support.

--
Jim Lester
Adobe Systems

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jun 30, 2008 Jun 30, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Thanks! It's not as obvious as it used to be.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jul 04, 2008 Jul 04, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

It's really cumbersome. You have to highlight the text, then move the mouse way off to click on the bookmark icon. Why can't they make it like it used to be so you select the highlight tool, and then the text is automatically highlighted in one step.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guest
Jul 06, 2008 Jul 06, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Clark,
It was a design decision to simplify things - btw this was an overall theme for Digital Editions vs Adobe Reader. One of the problems with Acrobat (or Photoshop) was the multiple distinct modes (or tools) that makes it easy to get lost in terms of what tool you are using. If it is just a matter of mouse clicks causing you pain, may I suggest using the keyboard - Ctrl-b (Cmd-B Mac) will bring up the bookmark dialog.

But I will add having a keyboard shortcut that will just do a highlight without bringing up the "Add Bookmark" dialog, to the feature planning list.

Thanks for the feedback.
--
Jim Lester
Adobe Systems

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jul 07, 2008 Jul 07, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Jim,

Thanks for your feedback. That's just one of the problems with DE. Another major one is that it doesn't seem that it's possible to search your "comments". In the previous versions when using e-books, you could highlight, underline, make comments and all of this was searchable. Are our "comments" searchable in this version?

Another problem, it doesn't work with my pda - and it's not backwards compatible with previous versions of ebooks. I have hundreds of dollars of ebooks that I now can't read. They were highly commented and now I've lost all my comments! It really makes the whole idea of ebooks untenable.

There should be an iron-clad rule that all previous ebooks must be convertible to new versions with all comments in tact.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guest
Jul 07, 2008 Jul 07, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Searchability of both comments and the books are currently missing and already on the feature list. Just FYI, ADE keeps comments are now kept is separate very open XML files (the .annot files in you Annotations folder) to prevent the current PDF format lock.

If you have books that you can read in AR7 that did not get correctly transferred to DE, you should open up a support case.

--
Jim Lester
Adobe Systems

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Jul 11, 2008 Jul 11, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Does laziness always have to be the bottom line for software developers? Adobe should be ashamed.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Guest
Jul 11, 2008 Jul 11, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Joe,
Were you just trolling or did you have a specific point?

--
Jim Lester
Adobe Systems

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Sep 07, 2008 Sep 07, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Actually - troll or not... I agree with Joe. Who ever marketed this incomplete software should be ashamed. Bookmarks are not the same as highlighting or underlining text. Heck - a bookmark isn't even the same as adding in notes on top of text. A bookmark is used to mark a specific text area that you might want to study further or where you left off reading (another example of a software developer on a different planet when it comes to how people would like to use their computers).

Reader, and just about every other PDF viewer out there, had the ability to highlight, underline, add notes directly on top of text, and add bookmarks. So, just because Joe didn't elaborate on why you should be ashamed doesn't mean he's a troll... He, like many of us, are very very very unhappy with this product. Clue number one - see what your competitors are doing and do it better! Oh, I'm sure you've made the throngs of people happy with your DRM solution but are those same people going to be as happy when they have NO customers because the usability of this incomplete, rushed out the door, software has scared everyone away.

Joe summed our frustrations up quite nicely - "Does laziness always have to be the bottom line for software developers? Adobe should be ashamed".

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Sep 07, 2008 Sep 07, 2008

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST
Yes, that's right... Joe summed up our frustrations very nicely. I really get tired of people calling other people trolls just because they disagree with them or take offense at their remarks. I think Joe actually had a great point. I think Adobe has been lazy as hell on this. I don't know - either lazy or brain dead. But honestly, this is the most brain-dead product I think I've ever seen. It's horrible. It's many steps backwards. It's a total embarrassment to the proud Adobe family.

I'm an avid e-book reader and am very happy to have recently discovered ereader.com. No, I don't like their format as much as the original Adobe 7 pdf format for ebooks. But you know what - they get the job done. I can read books on my iphone and my windows pda AND my computer! And, I haven't had a bit of trouble loading it to any device I want. As long as I know the code to unlock the book I can read it on anything. Currently all my books are on 4 devices. And there hasn't been the slightest hassle getting them unlocked on these devices. It used to be hellish every time I'd open anything on Adobe Reader 7 - if I had gone several weeks without opening them. You'd get these crazy messages saying your software was no longer validated, and your books aren't licensed - then you'd go to the site to fill in the information which would ALWAYS be rejected several times before being accepted. And there was no customer support you could write or call. What a nightmare!

I can highlight text in the ereader software... can't underline so that's a bit of a drawback. But I can make notes. Not as nice as adobe 7 - but much better than this new version. It's not as full featured as I'd like, but they're adding features very quickly. But the main thing for now is that it works on my iphone and my windows pda. So at least I have portable books again.

Oh - and it NEVER crashes on my iphone or pda! Adobe reader for mobile sued to crash fairly frequently and it would lose my place in books. So far I've read a few hundred pages in ereader books and not a single crash and not once have I lost my place.

Adobe, I'm afraid in this interim period where you seemed to think customers could go without their ebooks for some number of months or years until you get your act together, I've found another solution. Oh and I should mention - if you had been willing to give a date when you projected having one - I just might have waited. For instance, if you had said "we're gonna have a new version for iphone in December" I totally would have waited and it wouldn't even have occurred to me to search for something else.

Since I've already bought about $100 worth of books, ereader is not a solution I'll want to change anytime soon. And with their frequent feature upgrades I don't think it's a solution I'll NEED to change anytime soon.

Funny thing is - I started this thread back in June. At that time I had already gone several months without a viable eReader and I was willing to wait awhile for Adobe to gets its act together. And from them I waited another 3-4 months until September. Then I discovered ereader as an app from the app store on iphone. I tried it reluctantly. Didn't love it - but a few days later they came out with an upgrade that had a bunch of improvements.

And they're promising an upgrade where we can take notes, make highlights and underlines and search text - ON OUR IPHONE AND PDAs!!

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines