When GoToR action open another document from document in full screen mode, irrelevant content is momentarily displayed

[rakunavi]

Hello all,

As lightly mentioned in this post, when you open another PDF file from a GoToR action link in a document displayed in full-screen mode, the previous screen that was displayed just prior to the transition to full-screen mode is displayed for a moment.

Even though it is only a fraction of a second, only a few tens of milliseconds, it is still displayed to the extent that you can judge the content. In terms of presentation quality, it is better to avoid exposing the audience to any such irrelevant frames.

In the following verification video, we use two sample files, source.pdf and target.pdf, with each page of source.pdf linked to the same page of target.pdf with a GoToR action.

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• SampleFiles.zip

  (8.21 KiB) Downloaded 11 times

The video first opens source.pdf and displays page 1, then goes to full screen mode, and then to page 10. Then click on the link on page 10 to view page 10 of target.pdf in full screen mode.

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  This is a GIF animation. Click to play.

If you carefully observe the screen before and after clicking the link, you will see the transition as shown in the following figure.

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  Extracted frames before and after clicking the GoToR action link from the GIF animation above

• No.1634 : Page 10 of source.pdf @ Full-screen mode
• No.1635 : Page 1 of source.pdf @ Normal mode
• No.1636 : Page 1 of target.pdf @ Normal Mode
• No.1637 : Page 10 of target.pdf @ Full-screen mode

In full screen mode of common PDF software such as Acrobat, the contents corresponding to No.1635 and No.1636 will not be displayed on the screen, and it will smoothly switch from No.1634 to No.1637. It would be appreciated if PDF-XChange Editor could similarly avoid displaying unnecessary frames. It appears that the higher the resolution of the monitor and the lower the performance of the CPU of the computer, the longer the unwanted frames are displayed.

Hoping that the above information will be of some help to you.
Thank you so much for your continued support.

Best regards,
rakunavi

- PDF-XChange Editor PRO Version: 10.5.0 build 393
- OS Version: Windows 11 Home 24H2 Build 26100.2894
- PC Model: Lenovo IdeaPad C340-15IWL, HP All-in-One 22-c0xx

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, rakunavi

I cannot make any promises, a fraction of a second delay showing the current cached appearance before snapping to or loading the new content is somewhat expected. This goes back to a constant struggle of "slick appearance" against "speedy solutions". For comparison I have tested Adobe as you suggested, and was surprised. Unlike you report, I found that when following these links in fullscreen mode, not only do they have a ~3 second delay on following the link (during which the screen is entirely blank and unresponsive), but it also forcibly exits fullscreen mode, bringing you back to the main application window, requiring you to manually enter fullscreen mode again..

I will ask the Dev team about this, to see if we can improve it at all, but I expect what we are doing here is among the fastest implementations we could offer, and the limitations really are, as you mentioned in passing, hardware related.

Kind regards,

[rakunavi]

Hello Daniel, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule.

For your reference, here is a video of the verification in Acrobat (Version 10.1.16).
To be sure, I tested a total of four patterns for different formats, animated GIF and MP4, at different resolutions in XGA and Full HD.
The MP4 video was recorded at 60 fps, but no matter how hard I look at it, I don't see any unusual frames mixed in along the way.

GIF Animation - XGA (1024x768)

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  This is a GIF animation. Click to play.

  
  

  

  Acrobat Version 10.1.16

GIF Animation - Full HD (1920x1080)

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  This is a GIF animation. Click to play.

  
  

  

  Acrobat Version 10.1.16

MP4 Video

• MP4-Videos.zip

  (2.4 MiB) Downloaded 2 times

Best regards,
rakunavi

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, rakunavi

That Dev team has come back and confirmed that while this is something which should be possible to address, it is far from a simple task, so this is likely to be a long term project, and not something that is resolved anytime soon. I have created the following ticket to track the issue for you:

RT#7278: Bug: Small display artefact when using cross doc links

As an aside, I should note that Acrobat 10, and the version you are using (from 2011) is now nearly 15 years old.. Comparing to it is difficult because the spec has changed, new features, bugs, and fixes are implemented, and many aspects of these processes are "heavier" than they used to be due to those new capabilities (hooray, feature bloat!).
Just a word of warning that such an old application, may often give different results to what we have on hand to compare with. This comes along in much the same vein as asking for technical support without mentioning using the "Viewer", Support will naturally assume use of the "Editor", and not our over a decade since discontinued software.

Kind regards,

[rakunavi]

Thank you, Daniel, for creating the ticket!

You are somewhat mistaken, but the reason I showed you how it works in Version 10.1.16 for Acrobat is not because the smooth GoToR action is only visible in Version 10.1.16 and not in the latest version of Acrobat. Of course I have Acrobat Reader installed on my PC and it is the latest version, as you can see glimpsed in the video I showed in my previous comment where I open Acrobat from the context menu. Needless to say, I had already confirmed that the situation is exactly the same with the latest version.

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  Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 2024.005.20392

There are many reasons why I use older versions together, but one of the reasons is that by comparing the operating conditions in versions that are far apart in time series, I can get clues to solving the problem. For example, in this report, I am able to make a more precise point because I know how both the old version and the latest version work. If I used only the latest version of Acrobat, I would only be able to show that "the GoToR action is displayed smoothly in the latest version", but because I have both versions, I can objectively show that "the GoToR action is displayed smoothly all the way from the 2010 release of Acrobat X to the latest version" (I know that earlier versions also displayed GoToR actions smoothly).

The concept of time is quite important in estimating the cumulative impression users received when using the software. That is why I dared to show the demo with the older version when I had two versions to choose from, to imply that even the old version from 15 years ago (and of course even the latest version) works fine in Acrobat.

Another reason is that I want to keep the version of Acrobat that was released around the time ISO 32000-1:2008 was established.　Given the history of how PDF was transferred to the ISO standard, it is very likely that Acrobat 10 or a slightly earlier version of the specification became an ISO standard almost as is. Acrobat 10 is valuable as a technical reference because it does not contain any changes that Adobe has added on its own since then.

I digress, but just in case, here is a video of the verification with the latest version of Acrobat Reader.

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  This is a GIF animation. Click to play.

Perhaps the "Open cross-document links in same window" setting is disabled in your Acrobat. This setting is present in both version 10 and the latest versions, but for smooth GoToR action in full-screen mode, I recommend disabling it in older versions (around version 10) and enabling it in more recent versions.

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  Preferences dialog > Documents > Open Settings > "Open cross-document links in same window"

Regardless of version, this option is enabled by default, but in older versions, such as Acrobat 10, it was common for users who valued full-screen mode to disable this setting. It is interesting to note that the recommended settings change from version to version, but I love fullscreen mode enough to know that such differences exist. How much do you love full-screen mode?

There would be no point in comparing software that is not set up correctly and discussing which is better or worse. I am beginning to wonder if my past request have been reviewed by someone who is familiar with the full screen mode and can properly evaluate it. If anyone likes full screen mode and multi-monitor environments as much as I do, my request should seem quite reasonable to them.

• How to display all windows in full screen on multiple monitors?
  viewtopic.php?t=37353

If the reason you could not reproduce the same situation as I did was because the “Open cross-document links in the same window” setting was disabled, I am curious as to why a setting that is enabled by default was changed to disabled. I am even more curious because it should be common knowledge to you as a support technician that if you are going to change a setting from the default, you should do so with a good understanding of what it means and what effect it will have.

Comparing to it is difficult because the spec has changed, new features, bugs, and fixes are implemented, and many aspects of these processes are "heavier" than they used to be due to those new capabilities (hooray, feature bloat!).

Since we're at it, let me show you another interesting video. PDF-XChange Viewer can display GoToR actions much more smoothly than the latest build of PDF-XChange Editor, even though it is not as good as Acrobat. The latest version of Acrobat and Version 10, the latest version of PDF-XChange Editor and PDF-XChange Viewer, both equally far apart in release time, but Acrobat maintains the smoothness of the GoToR action in full screen mode. These are the facts.

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  This is a GIF animation. Click to play.

  
  

  

Please give my best regards to developers.

Best regards,
rakunavi

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, rakunavi

Indeed as you said, that option was disabled, however, I do reset my app settings quite frequently, and I haven't needed to fiddle with Acrobat's settings in a while. So now I am wondering if the method I have been using to "reset" the settings there isn't incorrect. It would be really nice if they offered a simple "reset settings" button in the UI, like we do, instead of requiring the folder and registry key deletion.
I am using Acrobat PRO, so perhaps there is an extra location they have added since the last time I checked on the process. I will dig into that later today.

In any case, After changing the setting, I do see the same as you report. Nonetheless, as I said before, the dev team is already working on it, and a ticket was made to improve this, so there is not much more I can offer in the meantime.

Kind regards,

[rakunavi]

Hello Daniel, thank you for your reply.

I am relieved that you have been able to reproduce my situation, because I believe that only with a proper understanding of the situation of your comparative rivals will you be able to properly prioritize your development tasks.

The easiest way to completely initialize any software configuration, including the OS, is to create a new user in Windows. I have created and deleted users countless times. Even though PDF-XChange Editor itself has a great feature to initialize settings, I understand that this is the only way to completely initialize all program settings, including updaters and other related tools. That is why the screens in my verification videos are always simple and the settings remain default.

Best regards,
rakunavi

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]