Solution to slow-opening PDFs and Adobe Acrobat crashing your browser
Via Anil Dash, the solution to a long-standing annoyance of mine. Adobe is in a tight race with Microsoft for feature bloat, as evidenced by the ridiculous start-up time of Adobe Reader. Add to that the fact that viewing PDFs in your browser crashes the damn thing about 50% of the time, and basically I want to urinate on the entire PDF standard. But on to the solution:
- If you have Adobe Reader 6, upgrade to 7. It’s actually less bloated.
- Use Adobe Reader SpeedUp to disable all of the useless plugins that Adobe Reader loads on startup.
- Disable Adobe Reader from displaying PDFs in your browser. You know it’s just asking for trouble. In Adobe Reader 7, go to Edit > Preferences, select Internet, and uncheck the box for “Display PDF in browser.”