Forced to use Adobe??
I was alerted to something odd the other day. I had a patron who was trying to view a PDF file in an Ebsco database and was having trouble with it. As it turns out the problem was that inexplicably the file was being forced open through an embedded Adobe Acrobat viewer plugin. Yup Adobe or nothing else, what was also 'paint you in a corner' about the situation was that no HTML version of the document was available. Yuck, and here is why:
Security of PDF files
It's a well known that Adobe Acrobat is not the most secure piece of software. Making news recently is a critical exploit that can launch malicious software on your computer by simply opening a PDF document. This isn't the more sophisticated renaming a exe file to some jpg extension and tricking someone into double-clicking it.
You might get some advice saying that disabling JavaScript in Adobe might help stop some of these attacks but just recently it was discovered that doing this might not be enough. I wonder if PDF security is common knowledge?
"I just need a peer reviewed article, holy."
Alternatives?
Recently I have been using a PDF reader called FoxIt. Why? Really it was because it is lightweight, does what I need it to (displays pdfs... really) doesn't slowly leech my connection by 'auto-updating' the way Adobe does, plus it is available as a portable version. For my uses that is perfect. No tight coupling with the operating system, no crazy DRM, no worries about exploits. (Well proof to the contrary has surfaced). Now I'm not so lucky. I'll need to install Adobe to get access to Ebsco documents (which represent a sizable portion of our journal collection)
Going Open?
If 'information really wanted to be free' we could turn our back on PDF and DRM forever. If the world decided that e-Pub was better (or some other purely open standard XML based scheme was the way to go) there wouldn't be a need for a monolithic viewer to be installed.
This goes ditto for the uptake with HTML 5. Instead of backing this open standard people are still choosing Adobe Flash. So much so that Chrome is going to pack the Adobe plugin as part of the standard installation.
I tried to look up to see if Ebsco has made some definitive deal with Adobe and Acrobat but could only find some basic tech support information:
- Ebscohost support article on FF plugin: http://support.epnet.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?topic=&id=4819&page=1
- Ebscohost support on IE plugin: http://support.epnet.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?topic=&id=4836&page=1
- Ebscohost FullText Viewer Support sheet http://support.epnet.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?topic=&id=4816&page=1
Further Reading
why pdf is evil - ex libris
Adobe fixes 15 flaws in Reader,Acrobat - Search Secuity
Comments
2 comments postedWait, I see that there's something more complicated than you suggest. The EBSCO support page on FF OSX directs you to the only browser PDF plugin I know of for OSX, which is not an Adobe product. So they aren't requiring Adobe. Is it just that they are requiring a browser PDF plugin of some sort (rather than external-to-browser PDF software) that you are complaining about? Or that they are using PDF at all? (Almost all of our licensed content providers provide page fascimilies in PDF).
Hmm, last I checked there WAS no Adobe PDF view plugin for OSX. Is this no longer true? Or I wonder what EBSCO does with OSX browsers, such as Safari. If it allows them to use the PDF reader of their choice... maybe you could have your browser trick EBSCO into thinking you are OSX Safari or something.