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It's a good and useful review. I won't claim otherwise. But...

"Java-based PDF Studio 7.4 Pro has a non-standard user interface."

That's the salient point you want to pull out for a headline? Java-based software not conforming to native UI practices is a given. Java-based software has never even looked "normal" on Solaris.

bastion, on 15 May 2012 - 08:38 AM, said:

There's no reason why Java applications have to b that horrible. Plenty of Java apps use the native filesystem dialogs.

technologist, on 15 May 2012 - 12:15 PM, said:

I never said they're universally "horrible" (although some certainly are). I said they never really conform to the HI standards of the host operating system. Using native file system dialogs doesn't count unless that's the whole interface.

Yawn.

Properly set up Distiller & Acrobat Pro. All you need.

DVA_Airwolf, on 15 May 2012 - 01:09 PM, said:

And costs slightly less than 4 times as much.

bastion, on 15 May 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

As the review notes, this application's UI is horrible, since (among other things) it does not even use native filesystem dialogs. Did you even read the review, or were you just responding to the headline?

There are some merely mediocre Java UIs and there are horrible Java UIs, and this app definitely veers into the latter category. The review was right to call that out.

technologist, on 16 May 2012 - 05:39 AM, said:

I suspect I read the article more carefully than you read my post to which you initially responded. I led off with: "It's a good and useful review. I won't claim otherwise." That's a statement I couldn't make honestly if I hadn't read the article.

I went on to say it was odd to me (context: there was real, useful content in the article) that the issue called out to be used as a headline is that the interface is "non-standard." Saying a Java app has a non-standard interface is redundant ... not especially useful or interesting. A Java app that *did* have a conformant UI would be headline material.

Quote

And there are also some that are good. But none of them conform to the standards of their host platform. (Relatedly, conformance does not guarantee an optimal user experience.) In that Java is not simply a language but also a platform in its own right, it has its own "standard" UI and conformance to any existing platform wasn't a priority. (Actually, given the problem domain for which Java was designed, that was probably a virtuous stance. It only became a problem after people started to position it as a general purpose desktop development tool.)

My name is Leila Holmann, VP of Qoppa Software, the small company proud to produce PDF Studio.

Jeff, I would like to thank you for your review, the first article about PDF Studio on Macworld.

We believe that PDF Studio is the most complete PDF editor available on the Mac after Adobe Acrobat. It's also very affordable, at one fourth of the price. We have thousands of Mac users who have chosen PDF Studio, love it and use it on a daily basis.

Reading your article, we feel that overall it is very positive as you mention that PDF Studio makes it easy for Mac users to:
- create PDFs from other file types
- combine/split PDFs
- edit text and images
- add annotations, text, images, sounds, files
- apply digital signatures that require password
- add, move PDF bookmarks
- fill PDF forms

We regret the concentration on the one issue of non-standard user interface in:
- the headline
- the tagline
- the screenshot
- the conclusion

when as mentioned in the article by Jeff himself:

- "overall most of PDF Studio's features DO conform to the Mac standard".

As the comment stream shows, this gives undue weight to the underlying technology, instead of concentrating on the features and benefits for the end users.

We also feel that the ranking of 2.5 out of 5 is not in synch with the content of the article and may also be influenced by the same point.

To answer the comments, we would like to note that PDF Studio DOES use the native file browser by default for all standard functions. However, for more advanced features, such as Batch processing, we do use a non-standard file dialog which shows all directories on the system. We will look into ways to changing this in a future version. BTW, undo is also coming in version 8.

@Jeffery (author): We hope you can consider changing your headline and tagline to be less debatable/contentious so they better reflect the content of your article. And maybe reconsider your ranking?

@Technologist: You may want to give a try to PDF Studio to see for yourself. The evaluation version is free to download.

PDF Studio DOES use the native file dialog.

LeilaCaison, on 04 June 2012 - 09:46 AM, said:

Look at the picture below the 3rd paragraph. That's not the standard Mac interface for selecting a folder.

bastion, on 04 June 2012 - 10:37 AM, said:

Yes, it's hard to miss, it's the picture in the middle of the article. And that's only when you have to select multiple files in advanced features (read the legend on the picture). Too bad that this picture was chosen as "THE" screenshot for our application which is the BEST PDF application after Adobe Acrobat.

LeilaCaison, on 05 June 2012 - 06:35 AM, said:

And too bad for your rebuttal that there's also more to the article than just that picture.

"While it’s not particularly beautiful to look at and doesn’t conform to anything that would be considered standard Macintosh UI design, ...."

That's right up front. The 2 paragraphs immediately following the picture offer more detailed critique, of which the use of a non-standard file dialog is but a single element. Even the main document window is jarring in its placement of elements and use of non-standard controls and imagery.

And frankly, I find it even stranger that you'd use that non-standard selection mechanism in one place in light of the fact that you use the standard interface in others. Why?

Ultimately this is not a knock against your product particularly. As I wrote earlier, to say that a Java program has a non-standard interface is redundant. It comes with the territory.

That said, I'm curious about this citation in a prior post of yours: "- overall most of PDF Studio's features DO conform to the Mac standard." I read the article shortly after posting and well before your initial response. I recall no such statement.

As to this:

Quote

Consistency contributes to usability and thus utility. While I agree, as you can see from my prior posts, that focussing on non-standard user experience in a Java program was a strange place to go for a headline, I don't think at all that it's as unimportant as you're implying here. In this case the review doesn't merely note that the user experience is non-standard, but that specific core elements of the user experience are missing outright.

The exact quote is: "While many of PDF Studio's features conform to Mac standards, some, like the program's Combine Files option, expose too much of the operating system's underlying folder structure."

Our application needs not be judged only on a few quirks here and there that are not Mac like. Our users, including Mac users tell us that PDF Studio's user interface is very intuitive especially for such an advanced application that supports hundreds of features. Over the years, many Mac users have suggested improvements to make PDF Studio conform to Mac standards. But we don't hear complaints anymore as we have implemented most of their suggestions. We have not heard complaints about the folder chooser component for instance (still planning to fix this for next version).

When judging an app though, it should be evaluated in different categories: features, price / value, user interface, ease of use, etc... so users can get an overall idea. I get that in user interface we didn't get a top score but what about the other categories?

And what about PDF Studio's solid PDF rendering technology? Apart from Adobe Acrobat, most PDF apps (if not all) on Mac depend on the underlying PDF rendering technology which has its limitations. We have developed our own over the last 10 years. PDF Studio supports the most extensive set of PDF features, it is a robust application, PDF Studio can validate and apply official digital signatures when most other apps can not.

This post has been edited by LeilaCaison: 06 June 2012 - 04:58 PM