User Name
Password
AppleNova Forums » Apple Products »

Bugs in Preview?


Register Members List Calendar Search FAQ Posting Guidelines
Bugs in Preview?
Thread Tools
Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2009-11-01, 17:32

I use Preview a lot and generally really like it. Since moving from Tiger to Snow Leopard I've also started to use Preview for PDFs, which I didn't do previously. However, I have a couple of annoying issues with it:

1. Opening multiple files simultaneously from the Finder has seemingly random results. Sometimes all files open in one Preview window (as I've directed in Preferences); sometimes only a few of the selected files open at all; and sometimes two Preview windows open, each with some of the selected files. Quitting Preview and reopening the selected files often changes the behaviour.

2. The Zoom button is broken. Admittedly, window zoom has never worked reliably for me in OS X's history, but this is a new problem. If I open a large image file, zoom works fine. But if I open a second file (while the first is still open in Preview) zoom no longer works. Clicking the green zoom button repeatedly causes the window to flap back and forth pathetically between two unwanted sizes.

Anyone else have these issues?
  quote
stratotom
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
 
2009-11-01, 18:17

I've experienced 1 quite a lot. Never been able to work out why, always assumed it had something to do with the way I was opening/something I was missing.

Not really had 2.
  quote
Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2009-11-01, 18:57

Thanks for your comments, stratotom. As to my second problem, here are two large images (in case you don't have any lying around your hard drive):

http://chsvimg.nikon.com/products/im...g/pic_004b.jpg
http://chsvimg.nikon.com/products/im...g/pic_001b.jpg

(Option-click them to download. They're Nikon D700 sample images, if you care. )

Open the first in Preview. Note that zoom works as it should. Open the second one. Doesn't the zoom button now fail to maximise the window? In my case, at least, it leaves the second Preview window smaller than my screen.
  quote
stratotom
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
 
2009-11-02, 04:22

Hmm, you're right - I do get that issue. Never noticed it before because I hardly ever use the zoom button in OS X.

It seems to minutely adjust the size on the first click, and subsequent clicks of the zoom button don't appear to have any effect at all.

I'm not really a 'power user' so these workflow disruptions aren't a massive problem for me, but it would be nice to have them resolved, if only to uphold the Just Works reputation.
  quote
WrestleEwe
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Location: Utrecht NL
Send a message via Skype™ to WrestleEwe 
2009-11-02, 04:53

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorian Gray View Post
1. Opening multiple files simultaneously from the Finder has seemingly random results. Sometimes all files open in one Preview window (as I've directed in Preferences); sometimes only a few of the selected files open at all; and sometimes two Preview windows open, each with some of the selected files. Quitting Preview and reopening the selected files often changes the behaviour.
Anyone else have these issues?
I have that as well, quite annoying actually...

Another thing that bugs me is that the OSX' PDF rendering isn't really that good. Preview seems to make a lot of mistakes when asked to open vector based PDFs. Escpecially ones made with Adobe software.

Also, there is a tipping point between the lightweight Preview and the heavyweight Acrobat. I get a lot of converted autoCAD/Vectorworks drawings, when they reach a certain complexity Preview's PDF renderer gets so slow that it compensates for Acrobats long startup time.

On my MB that point is at around 10/15MB worth of pure vectors. Adobes renderer is just better than the one in OSX, but Acrobat itself is so bloated that no one notices until the files get a little complex.
  quote
Kickaha
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2004
 
2009-11-02, 11:34

Quote:
Originally Posted by WrestleEwe View Post
I have that as well, quite annoying actually...

Another thing that bugs me is that the OSX' PDF rendering isn't really that good. Preview seems to make a lot of mistakes when asked to open vector based PDFs. Escpecially ones made with Adobe software.
Hmm, never ran into issues with anything *other* than Adobe software - sure it's not the software *producing* the PDF mucking it up? Tweaking Acrobat to handle bugs in Photoshop, etc, isn't a new way of ensuring your product lines are considered 'the only working standard'. (MS has done this for years.)

Quote:
Also, there is a tipping point between the lightweight Preview and the heavyweight Acrobat. I get a lot of converted autoCAD/Vectorworks drawings, when they reach a certain complexity Preview's PDF renderer gets so slow that it compensates for Acrobats long startup time.

On my MB that point is at around 10/15MB worth of pure vectors. Adobes renderer is just better than the one in OSX, but Acrobat itself is so bloated that no one notices until the files get a little complex.
I can (maybe) see that... Preview is wicked fast for me, while Acrobat is a dog, even after launched, but my scale issues have more to do with page size than vector density. Did you know that Acrobat has a 200"x200" hard limit on the image size? Annoying as hell when you're automatically generating massive graphs, and assume that PDF will be the best universal display format.

Even better? No warnings, no errors, just... a blank document. Not even anything blatted to a log. Preview handles them just fine.

Their own goddamned format, and they can't get it right with the programming.

Grr. Recent headache, still ranty about it. But back to the Preview bugs...
  quote
Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2009-11-02, 18:19

I could rant for hours about Adobe software, and I'm not even a programmer. Speaking of Adobe: I was editing some Halloween photos tonight for a friend, and I ran into my problem 1 (see original post) with Photoshop Elements, i.e. multiple files didn't all open in Photoshop when told to do so in the Finder. So unless Photoshop Elements suffers from the same bug as Preview (maybe due to an underlying change in OS X?), this could be a Finder bug rather than a Preview bug.
  quote
Rehnquist
Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
 
2009-11-03, 18:42

I'm having the same trouble, asked over at apple discussions on the apple site but no ideas
  quote
Kohoutek
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: England
 
2009-11-04, 20:24

It looks like the multiple file problem is a Snow Leopard 'security feature' .

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/11/04/snow-...ly-downloaded/

Also, not a bug, but is anybody else unhappy that the default tool when you open Preview is the select tool, I'm sure it used to be zoom, which made much more sense to me at least. In Leopard didn't you get a magnifying glass cursor so you could drag across the area you wanted to zoom into rather than just buttons.
  quote
joveblue
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Melbourne
 
2009-11-04, 21:04

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kohoutek View Post
Also, not a bug, but is anybody else unhappy that the default tool when you open Preview is the select tool, I'm sure it used to be zoom, which made much more sense to me at least.
I can definitely see why that would be annoying but it does make sense for those of us with multi-touch trackpads (and possibly, at some point, Magic Mouse users).
  quote
Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2009-11-29, 14:30

Looks like I've found another bug. Open two pictures in Preview, each in its own window. With the focus on one window, hold down the Command key and click on the zoom button (or another button) on the window behind. Whoops!
  quote
Noel
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Chicago
 
2009-11-29, 15:12

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorian Gray View Post
Looks like I've found another bug. Open two pictures in Preview, each in its own window. With the focus on one window, hold down the Command key and click on the zoom button (or another button) on the window behind. Whoops!
Works as expected for me...
  quote
chucker
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: near Bremen, Germany
Send a message via ICQ to chucker Send a message via AIM to chucker Send a message via MSN to chucker Send a message via Yahoo to chucker Send a message via Skype™ to chucker 
2009-11-29, 15:31

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorian Gray View Post
Looks like I've found another bug. Open two pictures in Preview, each in its own window. With the focus on one window, hold down the Command key and click on the zoom button (or another button) on the window behind. Whoops!
Heh, nice one.

Noel: it should zoom the image whose button you're clicking. For me, and presumably for DG, it's always zooming the frontmost image.
  quote
Noel
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Chicago
 
2009-11-29, 18:16

For some reason I thought he was talking about the maximize button. Nevermind!
  quote
Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2009-11-29, 18:19

Yeah, for me (and all of us, I suspect) it behaves as chucker said. I reported the bug to Apple here. Obviously not a major issue, but still worth reporting, I think.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Noel View Post
Works as expected for me...
Given that the rest of the thread is about OS X's window zoom button (the green one in the "traffic lights"), you may have misunderstood what button I meant (my fault). More clearly, I meant the buttons in Preview's Toolbar.

Edit: of course, you figured this out before I posted this...

Last edited by Dorian Gray : 2009-11-29 at 18:34. Reason: as noted
  quote
Posting Rules Navigation
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Post Reply

Forum Jump
Thread Tools
Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Month of Apple Bugs WrestleEwe Apple Products 29 2007-01-07 21:29
AJAX bugs chucker Feedback 7 2007-01-04 17:23
A few bugs, just in case no one has noticed... Stroszek Feedback 42 2006-02-28 06:17
10.4.4 bugs jsk173 Apple Products 26 2006-01-17 19:48
10.4.3 bugs jsk173 Apple Products 20 2005-11-13 10:27


« Previous Thread | Next Thread »

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 16:49.


Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004 - 2024, AppleNova