That’s an accurate assessment. Everyone has their own reasons
And today InDesign won’t let me publish a previously published file online. As before, I searched the Adobe help forum and found supposed solutions — of which, zero worked. I even found suggestions there from @Smurf2.
Restarted computer, cleared preferences, ran preflight, and fixed a small font-related error that preflight found, Restarted InDesign even more times. Still, InDesign immediately crashes as soon as I hit the publish button.
I can publish new documents, but not this one that I was able to publish two days ago. Saves to PDF just fine. Everything in the file seems ready to go but nope, InDesign immediately crashes.
I’m spending far more in lost time and lost client confidence than I spend renting Adobe’s buggy software.
Solved — kind of. I tracked it down to a specific page that, as far as I could tell, had nothing wrong with it. I selected everything on the page, then clicked the up arrow to move everything a point or so, then clicked the down arrow to move it back. After saving the page, InDesign apparently overwrote whatever error was causing the problem, and everything worked fine. I suspect it had something to do with an animation on the page, but I’m unsure.
I don’t work for adobe. But you’re smart enough to realize all software is buggy
I don’t publish online but I have heard this as you know from my helpful replies on the forum.
The only way these things get looked at is onon the report bugs which is separate to the forums.
https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html
There might be other things more serious. Did you run the creative cloud cleaner tool?
Is the file on your computer or syncing through Dropbox or Google or even CC cloud storage?
How often have you saved this doc? Was it new or is it an old file that’s updated. 17.3 was just released and if it was made in 17.2 that might be an issue. If so a round trip through idml might help.
Seem like you solved it by moving the items slightly. It could have been a rounding error in xy co ords.
But seems like what I posted over on Adobe helped 
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Sometimes opening from IDML makes glitches go away. It kills a lot of other things too, but can be worth it. Sometimes a simple “save as” will fix it too. It’s when they just plain don’t open that really sux.
That’s good advice from both of you.
Even when the problem is tracked down or navigated around, the lost time still amounts to lost money. I supposed these sorts of delays need to be averaged into overall fees, but it really sucks when a string of them happen in rapid succession and pretty much kills whatever profit is made from the job while pushing the work into the weekend.
I agree. That’s why I think there’s something more underlying happening.
Suppose it might make a nice thread. I can start out with top 5 InDesign fixes when things go wrong.
Then it can be added to.
Same for other software. I will take a look tomorrow.
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Is Adobe (still?) lazy? Google's 'Don't Be Evil' Mantra Is 'Bullshit,' Adobe Is Lazy: Apple's Steve Jobs (Update 2) | WIRED
Firstly, the software is ‘all or nothing’. You only have an option to get the entire suite of apps, even if you just want access to three or four. If you could choose which apps you wanted, and pay the price for them, great. But no, Adobe makes you pay for everything regardless.
Secondly, you have to keep paying the subscription for all eternity, just to keep access to your files. There should absolutely be an option to just buy a license like we used to.
Thirdly, the user experience is dreadful. Apps are buggy, the interfaces aren’t consistent, and features often don’t work well. To name but a few: InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator regularly open with no palettes displayed on startup; the graph and chart tools in Illustrator literally haven’t been updated in years, and are a nightmare to work with; Dynamic link between After Effects and Premiere often breaks, and you can’t easily replace comps like you can footage.
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Not true. You can purchase separately.
Not true. You can choose to pay monthly or by paying yearly. You can buy a monthly rolling contact or a month by month basis.
The files are stored on your computer, you have access to them 24/7. Yes you need to be paid up for at least a month to open and edit them.
You can customize your layout of pallets and save them to your preferred layout to open like that.
Name me a software that isn’t buggy.
Name me software that’s consistent.
Graph and chart in illustrator, you need to learn how to use this properly. There’s really cool features. Granted it’s not intuitive. You do have to spend time learning it.
Imagine that.
I can’t speak for the other things.
Seems like you need more experience
As for the subscription model, can’t control that.
It’s actually cheaper now than it was when you bought perpetual licenses.
A years subscription equals about what it cost to upgrade to latest versions.
There were so many versions and everyone on different versions it wasn’t possible to maintain everything and improve things.
Plus there was so much piracy with the perpetual licenses it meant they weren’t getting paid for their hard work.
With a subscription model they are better able to manage the versions and have countered the piracy.
Sorry not much else I can say.
If you need a hand seeing up your interfaces for pallets and saving and customizing your workspace let us know.
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I’m beginning to hate the name of this thread.
It’s very negative. I’ve used Adobe for over 20 years. It’s the bread and butter of this industry.
Sure, it’s expensive. But it only costs the cost of a tank of gas (petrol/diesel) each month.
That’s it - it’s not THAT expensive.
Sure, if you’re a hobbyist it is. But as a hobbyist you’re not a professional, and using professional grade tools.
Similarly, if I want to dig up my garden I don’t go and rent a professional digger, it’s too expensive for a one time thing. I used a shovel and hired a skip.
I got quoted 8k to clear the garden and 5 days work - I didn’t want to pay it seemed expensive, so I bought a shovel for 30 quid and it took me 2 months.
And now, the job is done, it took longer, and it looks good to me, but a professional would be horrified at how uneven the ground is. But it will do me.
I’m not offering a professional gardening service. And if I was I’d have to have professional grade tools and pay for the labour and pay people.
Anyway - for most professional desingers, Adobe is the bread and butter for a lot of us.
The ‘hate’ being spread on this forum amongst other designers for software that pays the bills for 60 quid a month for access to professional grade software and online tools
Over 20 apps available, publish online tools, integration of stock, integration of access to 1000s of fonts. Integrated portfolio and behance accounts.
This is industry standard professional grade software. Yes, you have to pay for it.
If you can’t afford it right now, there’s other options.
Perpetual licenses are not coming back any time soon - people need to get over that. It’s not happening. Move on.
However, there is a feature request/bug section
You can air all your bugs here and feature requests, like return of perpetual licenses.
https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html
If you don’t post your grievances/issues or feature requests here - it will never be heard.
Posting on a forum about it is like shouting into a black hole.
Would I welcome a perpetual license? I don’t think I could go back. I like the subscription model.
Yeah, hate is too strong. I’ve changed it to dislike, which more accurately reflects how I feel toward the company when I’m not facing a deadline that I can’t meet due to some buggy feature.
I feel for you. But I can say with hand on my heart that in 20 years, me and everyone I have ever worked with have never met a ‘bug’ that stopped or delayed production work.
I haven’t had an issue with Adobe software in a very very long time. And I am a daily user on both Mac and PC.
Who’s to say if you used other software it wouldn’t bug out either.
I’ve been using Adobe software daily since the mid-1980s, so you’ve got nothing on me there. 
My latest gripe, which is related to another gripe I mentioned earlier has to do with InDesign’s online publishing feature. I have a client who insists that I use it to publish their bi-annual guidebooks due to its ability to display InDesign’s PowerPoint-like animation features.
The analytics feature on their website dashboard providing user access data on the different files served from the Adobe publishing site only works, perhaps, ten percent of the time. It used to work all the time. I initially bid (and landed) the job on my assumption that Adobe would keep it running. They haven’t. They haven’t done away with it — it just doesn’t work most of the time, so now I’m having to apologize to the client for Adobe’s inability to keep what I’m paying for with my CC subscription running as it’s supposed to.
Yes, I’ve searched the forums and people have complained about it for months. Yes, others have reported it through their official channels. It doesn’t do any good. They’re unresponsive.
Yes, software inevitably contains bugs, but as Adobe’s software has bloated out, the number of bugs seem to grow even faster than their half-baked additions, such as the extremely limited and poor implementation of RegEx, the terrible 3D features in Illustrator, and the weird inconsistencies between one piece of their software and another. I also agree with @david about Illustrator’s graphing tools that haven’t changed in, what, 20 years. I’ve used them extensively for years and grown used to their awkwardness, but I’ve also used them enough to fully realize how bad they are. And I haven’t even mentioned the bugginess associated with running multiple monitors that would require another paragraph to explain.
And what irks me the most about Adobe is being held hostage to their subscription model that costs an arm and a leg. Yes, it’s a cost passed along to my clients, but with Affinity software providing 90-some percent of what I actually use in the CC suite at a small fraction of the cost and with far fewer bugs and headaches, yeah, I dislike Adobe.
Does Affinity offer a Powerpoint-like online publishing service?
I like affinity but it is lacking severely in a lot of tools required. I’ve beta tested this software and found it to be incomprehensive to the tools I need, which I assume makes it the same for a lot of professionals.
We won’t get into the lack of features and what some programs have over others - that’s a waste of time - every software manufacturer has tools that work different to their competitors -what’s the point in making them the same.
I’ve read a lot about InDesign publish online analytics dashboard not working for everyone - or at least they can’t it to work.
What I don’t see is what is going on with it - and what people have tried to fix it. It’s just the same message
Fix this - it’s not working - it’s been 4 years. But no info on how to reproduce the issue or any fixes they might have tried.
I’ve seen first hand features go awry due to updates to other software, java, security updates, virus protection, anti-malware etc.
Unfortunately, without hard data there’s nothing they can do.
I do know for a fact that the most shouted about problems are looked at.
And if it’s not mentioned it’s been looked at it doesn’t mean it’s not.
It’s just that they either cannot repliacte the issue, or replicate it successfully each time, or know why it’s breaking. So they might be working on it in the background so it’s either
Not got enough traction over other bugs
Or they can’t localise the issue to issue a permanent fix
Or both
I agree and I too have said it - they have added many features that were added to sell the application to stakeholders - and the feature never gets looked at again.
I agree - it has been bloated over the years. No disagreement there.
I’ve even suggested to Adobe that they start from scratch with their Apps and rebuild it from the ground up.
It gathered some traction - but not enough to get them on board with it.
Maybe they are doing it.
For example, I do know InDesign is built modularly, it’s basically a large database. So they add features as a module, and then interconnect that module with the relevant modules.
But when something goes wrong it’s hard to track it down.
It might go through a thousand modules and break at any of them.
So it might start at 1, 2,3,4,5 and then break, so the fix 5.
Then it goes 1-700 no problem then breaks.
Then it’s back to 350-700 to track it down.
They fix that.
And then it breaks at step 10.
They fix step 10 and it breaks at step 5.
It’s a very rudimentary explanation.
But fixing something at step 1000 can affect something at step 5 that was fixed earlier.
I’m not saying it’s an excuse. I’m just saying there’s reasons why it takes a long time to localise and fix every step.
As a font developer you probably know this very well.
I and many others upgraded every two years, because new features weren’t that many and not that great. So for me the price would have had doubled. But that hasn’t been my main concern.
Not true. You can purchase separately.
Yes. Most graphic designers need about three apps though. That would pretty much be the price for the whole suite, right?
Yes you need to be paid up for at least a month to open and edit them.
Yes, if the app hasn’t changed that much so it doesn’t open it (properly) anymore. There is history about that. I still maintain old versions of perpetual licenses in virtual machines for being able to open archived files.
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No, but my point is that if Adobe offers a feature, they need to fully support it and keep it up instead of moving their resources to the next half-baked thing. If Adobe didn’t offer animation features and an online dashboard for analytics, I never would have used it. But since they did, I expect it to work consistently, but it doesn’t.
Similarly, Affinity doesn’t offer support for variable fonts, but they’re saying they don’t yet because they haven’t got all the bugs worked out across all their apps. Adobe, on the other hand, rushes to offer buggy variable font support that is only now getting up to speed, and it’s still inconsistently supported across their publishing apps.
Their online publishing feature resides solely on their servers. Publishing the files works fine. It’s displaying their server analytics where the problem resides, which is entirely their issue to diagnose and fix.
Yeah, I agree. There’s the constant need to keep the revenue flowing by adding new saleable features instead of the unglamorous behind-the-scenes fixes and improvements.
Yes, definitely. It would be a big undertaking, but eventually, a software’s foundation and legacy holdovers from 20 or 30 years ago becomes so outdated that they hold back everything built on top of it.
Adobe is scrapping support for Type 1 fonts for that very reason — it’s just too old and outdated to warrant the continued workarounds necessary to support it. I’d be totally fine with Adobe freezing Ai, Ps, and Id for two years (with only bug fixes), then pouring those resources into a complete rebuild that saves what’s good and fixes what isn’t — all based on a modern, up-to-date architecture and a different, user-centric philosophy.
Valid points. I could counter each of them. But then you’d counter them.
So we’d be in a deadlock.
I’ll just say I was the same, updating every 2nd or 3rd version - and never on release date, but 8 months in. In fact, I used to update to the 2nd latest version of the software.
But Adobes reasoning for this is simple enough, it’s best for everyone to be on or near the same software version.
If you were able to open older InDesign files in previous versions of InDesign then those new features are not backward compatible.
One of the struggles I know Adobe had with everyone operating from CS3 to CS5 to CC to CC 2018/19/20 etc.
They just condensed the versions that people can be on - which makes sense in some ways.
But frustrating in others.
I could do with just InDesign to be honest. Very rarely do I need PHotoshop or Illustrator.
There’s a Photographers Plan - Lightroom and PHotoshop I think as a bundle.
Again, I suggested that Adobe operate a deal license for 3 or 4 apps.
It would technically be InD, AI, PS and Acrobat Pro.
If there was a deal on these that would be great.
Again it fell on deaf ears. But they did it for Photographers, because if they didn’t they could do to a dozen other competitors for photo editing.
InDesign is almost unique - I was looking at the Pricing for Quark - and it’s quite expensive in regards to a standalone app. But the price has dropped significantly since I last checked.
But would I go back to Quark - not a chance.
Brings to me the point of then Why would I move to other Apps that have lesser ability - like Affinity - I’m sure it’s ok for a lot of people. But it just doesn’t do what I need it to do.
That’s not to say that won’t change.
Adobe once said they’d never do a subscription model.
Affinity have said the same thing… it’s early days for them.
come the day of piracy and multiple version support many years down the road - who knows how or if they are still in business… it remains to be seen.
I’d say that’s over thinking it. I’d open the old file in the new software and overlay a previous passed proof to check for changes.
I’d then fix it up in the latest version of the software and save a new version of the file.
For me that’s better than running older software that’s virtually stored.
That being said, I don’t know you, or your workflow. So I’m hardly going to preach to you to what you should do.
You’re probably doing it the best way for you.
@Just-B To be fair - I wouldn’t touch their Publish Online - it’s just so bad.
I much prefer using other things to host the files and use analtyics from there.
HTML5 from AJAR is pretty decent and you can host the files yourself and derive your own analytics. Ok, it’s not out of the box setup, but if you get it working it’s much better.
I don’t use variable fonts, but I do know the issues on the forums in regards to variable fonts have subsided. Either people aren’t use them. Or they are using them and they are working ok.
I remember some PDFs going to print visually showed it onscreen but it didn’t output. But I don’t know the status of this issue.
Yes their Publish online resides on their server, I don’t know too much about this side of things, but I can try and find out more.
Let me do some digging.
I’m not saying Adobe are perfect, but there’s reasons why they have moved in a certain direction.
Revenue is behind it all. And sales (physcial copies).
And somewhere they have lost the ability tie the two together in a way that satisifies the users on the ground.
I once read an article that Adobe go to big meetings with stakeholders and ask them would they prefer a feature that they publish their document online from anywhere in the world. Or would you prefer to allow footnotes to span columns.
It would be that sort of inane comparison of features to request they pick from. And of course the CEO of a stakeholder company is going to want the Publish Online from anywhere - span footnotes across columns what is that???
So the presentation from Adobe is not going to the designers on the ground, they are going to CEOs who don’t know how to turn the computer on the morning or how to open Outlook to read an email.
This is how it was.
I’m not too sure how it is these days.
Revenue is behind it all. And sales (physcial copies).
And somewhere they have lost the ability tie the two together in a way that satisifies the users on the ground.
This says it all right here.
And that’s how Quark lost a lot of users when shiny new InD came along with a good supporting company. Either Adobe buys up Affinity, or Affinity grows legs and outruns old bloated Adobe.
(One can dream anyway. I hope to retire in the next 3-5 years so don’t care.)