If you use Gmail - you REALLY, REALLY need to make sure that you've got the latest patch - because on June 5th Adobe issued an "emergency" patch to fix a vulnerability that would allow nefarious baddies to steal your Gmail login credentials.
I don't know about you - but I have more than one device that uses Flash. I use Google's Chrome browser at work (3 Windows machines), at home (2 Macs + 6 virtual OS instances) - and I'm just getting pretty damn tired of updating all this stuff - all the time. But yet, if Adobe comes out with a "critical" patch - and you ignore it - your machine might get hacked - or your identity stolen.
Really? Identity theft from a browser plug-in used to play media or display a PDF document?
I'm especially worried about those "less technically savvy" people in my life - since I'm the "family IT guy." If they don't patch, it means I'm going to have to do all kinds of stuff to un-gunk their computers - because (technically inclined brethren) you KNOW they DO click on every single "pretty picture" on every single site they visit on the inter-web.
Now, I love PDFs - don't get me wrong - and because reader is now installed on 95%+ of all computers in the world - getting away from using it will be a challenge.
For those of you who are really smart out there - why don't you come up with a PDF to HTML5 converter that would just bundle up the PDF into a double-clickable HTML document? At least then we could be free from the eternal Adobe Patch Cycle...
... until someone hacks HTML5 readers... sigh.
UPDATE June 17, 2011 - Well, it seems as though the good folks over at Mozilla are SICK of the buggy Adobe Reader as well - and are going to build an extension (and eventually put into the codebase)... wait for it... a 100% HTML5/JavaScript PDF rendering engine! Hot off the wire from ComputerWorld:
Mozilla is working on a project that will add PDF rendering to Firefox using HTML5 and JavaScript, eliminating the need for users to run Adobe's own plug-in.
We can only HOPE the other browser folks get behind the open-source pdf.js project as well! God speed Mozilla folks!
1 comment:
pdf viewer in html is already done.... http://www.i-programmer.info/news/167-javascript/2621-javascript-renders-pdf.html
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