Website Annoyance #2. Extra Software Needed to View Site

Don't blame Canada. Blame Adobe.

Adobe made the Acrobat reader a must for viewing PDF files mainly because:

• It solved a need. Every page now printed out the same regardless of which printer or operating system was being used. It could even be made interactive for form completion.
• Adobe gave away millions of the free readers before publishers adopted the new PDF format as a standard for ebooks.

Acrobat users now demand PDF files in most instances where ebooks used to have various formats including "exe". Hackers have made downloading exe files from unknown sources an unsafe activity.

As standard as Acrobat now is, the same is not true for Flash, Shockwave, Deja Vu, and a host of other add-ons with various degrees of support.

I don't need to sit through a 2 meg Flash intro when what I want is information. Apparently, many others agree. You can add Flashblock to your FireFox browser and decide for yourself when to allow the Flash to load.