So tired of Adobe. They're part of the problem.
I held off on Windows 10 for as long as I could until Adobe, and therefore my job, required it. Now this nonsense. I hope this isn't the start of them joining on the web DRM bandwagon.
Adobe reactivated my subscription without my permission and now wonât refund me. They have records of my subscription being cancelled in May but canât explain why I was suddenly billed again in August.
Chargeback time.
Hello Bank? Yes I'd like to issue a stop payment
Iâm going to try Adobe customer service one more time, but this may be the route I go. I always try to avoid chargebacks because it can lead to stuff just getting sent to collections which is more harmful than eating the payment.
This is seriously deserving of an antitrust investigation. An open web is essential.
*Edit: referring to Chrome and its derivatives, not Adobe. Alphabet/Google has been begging for antitrust action for years.
Adobe has already proved they don't understand web technologies when creating Flash.
What's extra stupid about these, is most of the time just using a user agent switcher to make the site think you're on chrome or opera makes it work just fine.
I do understand it. These are browsers that they decided during development that are not supported. Not supported means not tested by a full QA team for months. And users are generally stupid, soba simple warning (use at your own risk) is something that does not work.
So they decide to just not support the other browsers.
To be clear, I am definitely not a fan of Adobe of this mechanism, just explaining.
I would be surprised if eveything works correctly. Generally they don't just decide that something isn't supported for no reason
Sometimes it's as simple as something like "firefox doesn't support import maps", but now they do (in 108+) but nobody has the time or inclination to go back and validate that the site now works in firefox.
The NHS' virtual appointment service in the UK doesn't support Firefox either, only Chrome, Safari and Edge. The dark days of "please view this website in Internet Explorer 6" are creeping closer to the present again. I hate the modern internet.
Websites supporting safari but not firefox really grinds my gears.If safari can run it, there's no way Firefox can't run it too.
Except the supported browsers aren't a broken, dysfunctional mess on a technical level.
Well, the ones based on Chromium aren't, anyway. I've heard some major criticisms of Safari in the last few years, for what that's worth.
"We can't track you using this browser. Please use one of the following that we have agreements with."
I hate them more for pioneering Software as a Service rent seeking crap. Why own software when you can become a revenue stream for Adobe. Die in a fire.
This is crap too tho.
As a software developer I have sympathy for this business model, but of course pricing has to be reasonable. A piece of software is a continuing social responsibility for the developer to fix new security issues, incompatibilities and bugs. If you only get paid a one-off sum the maintenance can drain you. A continued time-based fee is more in tune with how the actual development cost pans out.
A continual stream of revenue is great, understandably. But I would much prefer it if I could instead purchase v.1.34 of a software and get updates until major changes come. At which point I'd still have my v.1.3x with all its functions but if I wanted the new stuff (and the security patches with it) I'd need to pay for v.1.4x. Corporations (that probably much more require the security updates than hobbyists) wouldn't see much of a change and hobbyists could have a good alternative to subscriptions.
I don't understand why Adobe was allowed to survive as a company when Flash player had like 500 security vulnerabilities daily.
and Acrobat too.
Because marketing people wanted animatios.
Users wanted games to play, too. Couldn't do that in HTML4
They bought all competition for their creative suite. They werent "allowed" to survive, they made sure they were the only viable game in town and locked businesses into contracts.
Who'd disallow them?
Because the folks doing the work arenât the folks paying the bills. Youâve gotta invade some country and exploit the shit out of them for several years if you expect to have enough money to have a voice!
Could you just get an extension that changes your user agent? They exist. I wonder if it would work.
I bet it would because Firefox supports pretty much everything Chrome supports. Sometimes a little better.
Reminds me to how Google Meet does not support background blur in Firefox, but magically support it when you fake the user agent to chrome. Like, wtf?!
I canât believe I never thought about that - gotta try this later today
Adobe has been on the DRM bandwagon since forever.
Last Adobe product I used was CS6. That's what the company stuck with, presumably, to avoid shit like this.
CS6 is nice, i use it as a student. Then by the time i wanna buy it they went subscription only for new version.
Luckily i'm not in the industry that require it.
You could use a user agent switcher to pretend that you are running chrome, edge or anything else
Not if Google's web DRM thing goes through
Yes I know that
Go Affinity/Serif. Haven't looked back.
Love and use them for Photo, Publisher, and Designer, but there's no alternative for Lightroom. And honestly, I like Lightroom. It truly is the best at what it does. Simple, easy to use, great features, thoughtful design.
So the inevitable future begins. This will be the standard web very soon.
Only if people continue to give money to Adobe.
Unfortunately the majority of users or don't care about privacy or don't want to spend time to learn how to use other tools and for extremely professional tasks Adobe suite is not easily replaceable.
Iâd stop using the web if this happened everywhere. I do use a user agent switcher or Ungoogled Chromium in a pinch though.
This is honestly why I have more then two browsers installed. But it is sad this DRM stuff is spreading.
What in the actual fuck is this, thank you for bringing this up I will never use an Adobe product ever
What happens if you spoof the user agent?
Oh, this shit again.
Remember when websites required the Internet Explorer? It didn't follow Web Standards back then.
I know people love saying that IE didn't follow web standards, but the reality is more nuanced. Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator both had non-standard features, and a lot of the non-standard features IE had predated any relevant standards.
I think people's problem with IE came much later, after MS had used its monopoly in the operating system market to establish IE as a monopoly in the browser space, to then freeze it as IE6 for years and years.
With IE6 so dominant, even mandated for most people (with ActiveX being the de facto bypass to IE/HTML4 limitations), web designers assumed its universality and stopped caring about anything else, practically contributing to the stagnation of the web standards around an obsolete and suboptimal Implementation.
The better, faster, more compliant and innovative browsers had no chance of dislodging IE, while a growing number of decreasingly tech savvy users could see (from the experience of Firefox and Opera mostly) how bad they had it with IE and how much behind it had fallen.
Yep, the web was a mess back then (still is, tbh), but the hatred for IE/MS is deserved, and comes back with a sour taste as we are witnessing the same thing all over again (just in slower motion).
Thankfully I am not required to use any Adobe products. Seeing this would seriously insult me.
Digital RESTRICTIONS management / DRM is the core of Adobe
@galaxi What version of FF are you using? I can access Adobe Express perfectly fine (116.0.1 on Win 11 Pro)
I just checked it out on mine. The regular version of Adobe Express works just fine in Firefox, but the "new Adobe Express (beta)" throws up an "unsupported browser" error in Firefox.
OP, look around for "use prior version" links on Adobe Express's website, as that will send you into the version that works in Firefox.
What are people using to edit/sign PDFs. Adobe is a nightmare and Iâd rather use anything else
I don't get why PDFs are so hard to open. The format has been around for ever. Why does Adobe have such a grasp on it, and why isn't it as common to open as a txt?
There are free programs that'll open it, but it's few and far between. It's a pain in the ass to find one.
Edit.
I looked it up. Adobe created PDF, but:
Anyone may create applications that can read and write PDF files without having to pay royalties to Adobe Systems; Adobe holds patents to PDF, but licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its PDF specification.
Foxit Reader has decent PDF editing built in. I use it all the time. I think they call the pen mode "comments", but you can also load your signature as an image file.
The only time I use (pirated) Adobe Acrobat is when I need to edit existing content in PDFs, like fixing layout or editing text.
Foxit can also OCR it and allow editing I believe.
LibreOffice Draw
I have used Foxit/Phantom both personally and professionally for years now with no complaints
Thanks, might switch. I'm tired of Adobe running ten tons of crap in the background.
Happy PDF-XChange user here. Fair pricing for home users / small businesses, great feature set, stable, regular updates that actually improve the product.
Actually had complaints of less-technical users at work when by some weird accident the Adobe product returned (sneakily bundled installer?) or when a Windows decided that PDFs are to be opened with Edge now, because the users wanted PDF-XChange back. Normally users either don't notice or don't care.
Apparently Word is a good PDF editor. Or Inkscape for single page documents.
Inkscape now supports multi-page documents! The PDF importer was also recently overhauled.
Inkscape at this point is the âhold my beerâ of PDF editors, able to edit absolutely anything on the page.
Only problem is Inkscape can't import or embed PDF fonts. It can convert text to paths during import, but that's it.
On all my Macs, Preview is set as the default app for handling PDFs, and I use it for signing, adding text, rearranging and deleting pages; works flawlessly. Fuck Acrobat Reader / Pro.
If I need to do something more complicated, I'll open it in Illustrator.
If safari is supported, then there is no reason to not supporting Firefox. What key features supported by safari required by adobe that's not supported by Firefox?
Out of all the modern browsers, itâs always Safari that I end up needing to write compatibility code for. Iâm sure the app works fine on Firefox, they just havenât tested it.
Tbf, while daily-driving Firefox I do occasionally encounter websites (mostly web apps) that do not work on Firefox. But it's often a pretty simple fix, like sometimes I can get around it myself just through Dev Tools shenanigans.
Which is really sad because Safari used to be one of the best browsers over a decade ago now.
QA is probably just not testing on FF because of user share. And if it's not going through QA, you just don't support it as bog coorp...
User-agent switcher to get around it?
I got in on the Kickstarter for the Abode (not a misspelling) software suite by Stuart Semple and am hoping that when they release that it at least beats Darktable. Also, Darktable is pretty great as a free alternative to Lightroom.
Edit: I named him because he created the Freetone color palette when Pantone upped their license fee on Adobe. He also made a few paints and sells them at reasonable prices as an accessible alternative to more expensive paints.
Also DigiKam for the photo management side of things (I usually find that DarkTable is best suited for retouching). Between these two I don't feel the need for anything Adobe. Granted, I'm just a hobbyist so I can't speak from a professional point of view.
https://www.thurrott.com/cloud/web-browsers/mozilla-firefox/246039/tip-use-firefox-for-web-apps
I haven't tried this yet, and the page is from 2021. Perhaps the feature is still experimental or lost. Otherwise I use chromium to avoid the Google bloat.
decided to check out of curiosity and couldnât see the pref from the article listed in my config (im on 116.0), iâd imagine theres a chance it would work if manually adding that pref and setting to true but i have no idea where i could test it since i donât use any sites that would need that pref to work.
wonder if user agent spoofing would work, probably wouldnât hurt to try that as well
They dropped it in the desktop browser after a while, but I think you can do it with an extension or something.
They've been on the DRM bandwagon ever since they started making people log into their apps.
For an admin, their license management crap takes so much extra time and effort that it's not tolerable. They're just not good people.
Adobe is a curse word where I come from.
Unless you're a professional and want stuff like being able to set the white point of an image. 8 years and counting, stopped holding my breath.
Also, I think it's noteworthy that they touted "Pay once, free updates forever!", and then they release Version 2 which requires a new license. Oh, and has a new price.
I paid $100 for Designer, Photo and Publisher in 2021. The "full package" of V2 now costs $220 (although 25% off with existing license). Still cheaper than 4 months of Adobe sub, but I can't use it for anything when they won't implement simple features like white point selection, which I need multiple times daily.
I think this comment from the forum link above speaks volumes as to why serious graphic designers need to steer clear:
Another two years down the line - I bought Photo v2 and still there's no picker to set white and black. Affinity's ethos (with Photo Publisher and Designer) is clearly to de-monopolise Adobe and take a market share from Photoshop Illustrator and InDesign but when professionals have to Google just about every single new task, it's very frustrating. I get the impression Affinity designers have spent too much time in the world of Linux where manipulating software is the challenge and bending it to your will is the achievement. We ex-Photoshop users want developers who help us to create images and documents. The endless puzzle of how to do things with Affinity Photo doesn't interest us.
There are still so many bugs in the UI - annoying little things like having to click twice to activate a dialog, or typing in a value only to have the first digit ignored. Most of the tool icons are meaningless, jpg compression is so poor, native file sizes are so big, why can't I simply open a jpg edit it and close with a save? Why can't I batch save images as WEBP? I cannot move from the Develop Persona to Edit without committing the changes - and yet I can hit Undo when back to Edit - it's just clunky geeky sloppy stuff that smells of Linux.
We all hate Adobe and their monopolistic dictatorial empire, I think we all want to love Affinity but jeez it's really not working out for me. I could never recommend this to any of my clients.
Yeah, it's a bit hard when you're dealing with industry standards. I'm provided CC through work so it's not really my choice, but it sounds like Affinity still isn't a 1:1 option. I've been interested in it so I'm glad to hear the other side of things. It's easy to go FOSS for most personal things, but not as much when it comes to doing business.
You don't need windows for edge/chrome though, what's stopping you just using edge or chrome on Linux?
When I mentioned Windows, I meant that Adobe also requires Windows 10. And I don't believe in using edge or chrome because they're both anti-privacy. I feel like a huge company like Adobe aim to be compatible on most browsers and shouldn't limit their website visibility because of the browser you're using, especially with something like Firefox which is well-known. It sets a bad precedent for other websites to do the same, which cuts off the freedom of the web.
That does suck but useragent switchers surely get around that for now?
I think sometimes you've gotta just minimise the amount of proprietary/anti privacy stuff you use. Why not just run windows in a VM and pass your GPU in for Photoshop? No need to switch fully
the only thing I'll accept using one of those browsers for is installing a new OS on my phone, as ff just does not support that. aside from that, idc
Why do you need a browser on a PC to install new OS on your phone?
I mean u don't, it's just a hell of a lot easier