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Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?
Microsoft Edge. :shrug:

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The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
Just use Sumatra. It works perfectly for reading PDFs, it's fast and headache free. There's no reason to use other bloated crap unless you need to edit.

syntaxfunction
Oct 27, 2010
I use Reader. It's the Microsoft one. Works fine and you can add notes and stuff? It's good, try it.

qsvui
Aug 23, 2003
some crazy thing
What about PDF editors? Are there any free/low cost programs that have pretty much the same features of Acrobat Pro?

chocolateTHUNDER
Jul 19, 2008

GIVE ME ALL YOUR FREE AGENTS

ALL OF THEM
I must be a bad person because I just install the free Adobe Acrobat DC whenever I set up a new computer/reformat and it's been totally fine and unobtrusive.

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

chocolateTHUNDER posted:

I must be a bad person because I just install the free Adobe Acrobat DC whenever I set up a new computer/reformat and it's been totally fine and unobtrusive.

No, I do the same. It works fine now.

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012

GreenNight posted:

No, I do the same. It works fine now.

It's slower than every alternative; 'it works fine' isn't the problem people are trying to solve.

Just use edge.

Lork
Oct 15, 2007
Sticks to clorf

Khablam posted:

It's slower than every alternative; 'it works fine' isn't the problem people are trying to solve.

Just use edge.
It's... Not... though? What kind of ancient rear end computer are you running that doesn't open pdf files with Acrobot nigh instantaneously?

There was a time when Acrobat was horrendous, which is why all the alternatives got popular, but every one I tried had limitations and most were buggy as hell. Eventually I just gave up and went back to Acrobat, but found that they had cleaned up their act in the meantime. There's no reason to bother with alternatives unless you happen to have an existing relationship with one that you really like for some reason.

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012

Lork posted:

There's no reason to bother with alternatives unless you happen to have an existing relationship with one that you really like for some reason.

Same logic, but for the built in versions.
There's no reason to go looking for a PDF viewer in 2016. It's like going to look for a jpeg viewer on windows post 98se

Arsten
Feb 18, 2003

Khablam posted:

Same logic, but for the built in versions.
There's no reason to go looking for a PDF viewer in 2016. It's like going to look for a jpeg viewer on windows post 98se

Netscape browser is the only JPG viewer you need!

Ghostlight
Sep 25, 2009

maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me



Khablam posted:

There's no reason to go looking for a PDF viewer in 2016. It's like going to look for a jpeg viewer on windows post 98se
You actually do need to do that on Windows 10 though because Photos sucks.

m2pt5
May 18, 2005

THAT GOD DAMN MOSQUITO JUST KEEPS COMING BACK

Ghostlight posted:

You actually do need to do that on Windows 10 though because Photos sucks.

That's why there's IrfanView.

doctorfrog
Mar 14, 2007

Great.

Ah, goon logic. "I don't need this for my specific use case, therefore there's no reason for it! I'm helping in a help thread!"

SEKCobra
Feb 28, 2011

Hi
:saddowns: Don't look at my site :saddowns:
Honestly my favorite photo viewer is Picasa, it just works as you'd expect, but isn't bloated with features like ifranview. Too bad it doesn't have animated gif support.

Read
Dec 21, 2010

Honeyview is pretty good if all you want is an image viewer (not an organizer, editor, etc), I haven't found anything better. Good feature set, uncluttered ui, customizable.

Doesn't choke on folders full of large images:

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

I use Reader for pdf's I have to sign. It's pretty fast and just works.

SEKCobra
Feb 28, 2011

Hi
:saddowns: Don't look at my site :saddowns:

Read posted:

Honeyview is pretty good if all you want is an image viewer (not an organizer, editor, etc), I haven't found anything better. Good feature set, uncluttered ui, customizable.

Doesn't choke on folders full of large images:



Looks very different on my system. Also would like Up/Down to zoom.

Ojjeorago
Sep 21, 2008

I had a dream, too. It wasn't pleasant, though ... I dreamt I was a moron...
Gary’s Answer

doctorfrog posted:

Ah, goon logic. "I don't need this for my specific use case, therefore there's no reason for it! I'm helping in a help thread!"

Just because your dumb use case does exist doesn't mean it should exist.

Read
Dec 21, 2010

SEKCobra posted:

Looks very different on my system. Also would like Up/Down to zoom.

Takes like 20s in the options menu to configure it.

The Wonder Weapon
Dec 16, 2006



Apparently the latest w10 update broke whatever it was that allow people to port desktop gadgets from w7. I really liked the clock and calendar specifically. Anyone have a good alternative that still works?

Wanna fill my desktop with clocks. Fuckin clocks everywhere. clockclockclockclo

m2pt5
May 18, 2005

THAT GOD DAMN MOSQUITO JUST KEEPS COMING BACK

The Wonder Weapon posted:

Apparently the latest w10 update broke whatever it was that allow people to port desktop gadgets from w7. I really liked the clock and calendar specifically. Anyone have a good alternative that still works?

Wanna fill my desktop with clocks. Fuckin clocks everywhere. clockclockclockclo

Did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the windows gadgets program? (Back up your gadgets first, when I did it, they were wiped and I had to re-find them.)

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
Desktop gadgets aren't supposed to work. They were removed for a reason - because they were found to be a massive security vulnerability. I'm surprised there was ever a way to bring them across from windows 7, I was under the impression Microsoft pushed out a security update to windows 7 to disable them years ago.

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012

pee out my butt posted:

Just because your dumb use case does exist doesn't mean it should exist.

When the "use case" is "open a pdf" there are no factors to consider, because all pdf viewers open pdfs.

If you need DRM support or need to sign them or w/e then you already know what you need.

The Lord Bude posted:

Desktop gadgets aren't supposed to work. They were removed for a reason - because they were found to be a massive security vulnerability. I'm surprised there was ever a way to bring them across from windows 7, I was under the impression Microsoft pushed out a security update to windows 7 to disable them years ago.
This is the correct answer.

inb4 'but my use case needs a certain clock'

Read
Dec 21, 2010

As far as I can tell the only "security vulnerability" (and this is stretching the term) in gadgets is that they can run arbitrary code. But if you look at the spec, this is by design & it's the same risk you take when you run any closed source code.

You can probably find a way to run gadgets on Windows 10 despite attempts to prevent it, but I wouldn't suggest it anyways. Gadgets might be perfectly safe, but they're pretty limited in terms of choice.

Rainmeter is a good replacement with a much larger library, and all Rainmeter skins are open source by design.

Here are some examples from quickly looking on Deviantart.



Read fucked around with this message at 11:55 on Oct 18, 2016

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012

Read posted:

As far as I can tell the only "security vulnerability" (and this is stretching the term) in gadgets is that they can run arbitrary code.
You do realise this is the most severe vulnerability you can get?

Read
Dec 21, 2010

Khablam posted:

You do realise this is the most severe vulnerability you can get?

It's terrible that all applications on your computer have the worst possible vulnerability!

wyoak
Feb 14, 2005

a glass case of emotion

Fallen Rib
It was down to the fact that the people making gadgets that weren't already malware were writing really bad code that was generally vulnerable to MiTM and code injection (the Blackhat presentation showed them mitm'ing a gadget that was available in the MS gallery). Gadget usage was pretty low anyway so MS decided the attack surface wasn't worth it.

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012

Read posted:

It's terrible that all applications on your computer have the worst possible vulnerability!

No, they don't. You have no idea what you're saying dude. Remote code execution (RCE) is the holy grail of exploits and knowingly using software with 3+ year old, documented, examples is a bad idea™.

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/2719662

Keep in mind they removed it because it was being exploited for remote system compromise.

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Read posted:

Honeyview is pretty good if all you want is an image viewer (not an organizer, editor, etc), I haven't found anything better. Good feature set, uncluttered ui, customizable.

Doesn't choke on folders full of large images

I've been happy with FastStone Image Viewer except for 2 things: 1. It doesn't let you skip through decoding a large image before it finishes. This means your picture skipping will lag your mouse wheel if you hit something huge, and 2. It won't auto-resize the view window for large images so they fit the maximum width or height of your display (whichever comes first).

ACDSee 3 did both of these things and that was fantastic, but I just can't bring myself to keep using something coming up on 10 years of age. I'll take a look at your suggestion and see how it compares.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Read posted:

As far as I can tell the only "security vulnerability" (and this is stretching the term) in gadgets is that they can run arbitrary code. But if you look at the spec, this is by design & it's the same risk you take when you run any closed source code.

No,t he problem is that the gadget design required all of them to run in elevated privileges, in order to support functionality that only some of them would ever use. Because of this, it was a much bigger deal when they got remote code execution vulnerabilities than it would be with say a normal word processor.

But since so many popular gadgets needed the deep access for what they offered (including system monitoring things), Microsoft couldn't figure out a good way to revise the gadget system to fix the security problems while still allowing those popular gadgets to work. As a result they decided to scrap the program.


The Lord Bude posted:

Desktop gadgets aren't supposed to work. They were removed for a reason - because they were found to be a massive security vulnerability. I'm surprised there was ever a way to bring them across from windows 7, I was under the impression Microsoft pushed out a security update to windows 7 to disable them years ago.

Various people wrote things that would run gadgets, based on their own implementation. Some of those still work, but a lot of them won't run all the gadgets out there.

Factor Mystic
Mar 20, 2006

Baby's First Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

The Lord Bude posted:

Desktop gadgets aren't supposed to work. They were removed for a reason - because they were found to be a massive security vulnerability. I'm surprised there was ever a way to bring them across from windows 7, I was under the impression Microsoft pushed out a security update to windows 7 to disable them years ago.

Several years ago when the feature came out, I wrote a couple gadgets. Unfortunately, they remain some of the most popular things I've ever created. I get support requests for them a couple times a month. I just released a small patch a few weeks ago because people were whining so much. It's depressing, really.

I shouldn't be mad or surprised, since I myself use the Zune desktop software for music, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.

The Wonder Weapon
Dec 16, 2006



After the nth restart one of the gadget programs started working so that's fine for now.

I'm not married to "gadgets" per se, I just want to display a couple of clocks and maybe a calendar on the desktop since depending on my activity, there is only a specific part of the screen I can see and it's nice to never be without the time.

Plus, you know, it seems like your desktop should be capable of behaving like something more than a folder with a background.

I'll check out Read's suggestion. Thanks guys.

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?

Factor Mystic posted:

Several years ago when the feature came out, I wrote a couple gadgets. Unfortunately, they remain some of the most popular things I've ever created. I get support requests for them a couple times a month. I just released a small patch a few weeks ago because people were whining so much. It's depressing, really.

I shouldn't be mad or surprised, since I myself use the Zune desktop software for music, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.

I'll bet you use Windows Phone, too. (I loved Windows Phone. :smith:)

Read
Dec 21, 2010

wyoak posted:

It was down to the fact that the people making gadgets that weren't already malware were writing really bad code that was generally vulnerable to MiTM and code injection (the Blackhat presentation showed them mitm'ing a gadget that was available in the MS gallery). Gadget usage was pretty low anyway so MS decided the attack surface wasn't worth it.

fishmech posted:

No,t he problem is that the gadget design required all of them to run in elevated privileges, in order to support functionality that only some of them would ever use. Because of this, it was a much bigger deal when they got remote code execution vulnerabilities than it would be with say a normal word processor.

But since so many popular gadgets needed the deep access for what they offered (including system monitoring things), Microsoft couldn't figure out a good way to revise the gadget system to fix the security problems while still allowing those popular gadgets to work. As a result they decided to scrap the program.

This makes a lot more sense.

Khablam posted:


No, they don't. You have no idea what you're saying dude. Remote code execution (RCE) is the holy grail of exploits and knowingly using software with 3+ year old, documented, examples is a bad idea™.

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/2719662

Keep in mind they removed it because it was being exploited for remote system compromise.

That exploit isn't what I was talking about in the first place, RCE exploits are not an inherent flaw of gadgets. Poorly written gadgets are a security problem, which is the case for all applications (just moreso for gadgets since they apparently need to be run with escalated privileges). So it seems like my premise is still true, which is that a properly written gadget is perfectly safe.

Gromit posted:

I've been happy with FastStone Image Viewer except for 2 things: 1. It doesn't let you skip through decoding a large image before it finishes. This means your picture skipping will lag your mouse wheel if you hit something huge, and 2. It won't auto-resize the view window for large images so they fit the maximum width or height of your display (whichever comes first).

ACDSee 3 did both of these things and that was fantastic, but I just can't bring myself to keep using something coming up on 10 years of age. I'll take a look at your suggestion and see how it compares.

I think Honeyview will do the latter, but the former I'm not so sure about. I don't have any images large enough to cause it to hang (maybe because most of my pictures are on my SSD?).

Factor Mystic
Mar 20, 2006

Baby's First Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Ynglaur posted:

I'll bet you use Windows Phone, too. (I loved Windows Phone. :smith:)

Nah, I switched to iPhone, where the Microsoft apps are better quality.

but I still have 2 windows phones on my desk

Ynglaur
Oct 9, 2013

The Malta Conference, anyone?
Me too. Had a brief stint with a Note 5, which I liked until some odd compatibility issue prevented it from syncing with hosted Exchange.

Khablam
Mar 29, 2012

Read posted:

So it seems like my premise is still true, which is that a properly written gadget is perfectly safe.
Not really. Modern windows is really hardened compared just a couple of versions ago (7). The way sidebar ran apps mitigates all of them, making code there about as powerful as XP default users.
It's nigh on impossible to write a program that is safe under those conditions. Probably literally impossible given the mitm possibilities were so strong.
Saying "just like every program" is massively untrue however you slice it.

Read
Dec 21, 2010

What protections besides privilege escalation control are being mitigated? Even if all protections are mitigated, it's silly to claim it's "nigh on impossible" to write a secure application. Here's a snippet of JS I wrote for a webpage clock display, it is trivial to extend to show a graphical clock. Data is sourced from the local system clock.

code:
function updateClock() {
  var days = ["SUNDAY","MONDAY","TUESDAY","WEDNESDAY","THURSDAY","FRIDAY","SATURDAY"];
  var months = ["JANUARY","FEBRUARY","MARCH","APRIL","MAY","JUNE","JULY","AUGUST","SEPTEMBER","OCTOBER","NOVEMBER","DECEMBER"];
  var dateSuffix = {1:"st",2:"nd",3:"rd",4:"th",5:"th",6:"th",7:"th",8:"th",9:"th",0:"th"};
  var timeSuffix;
  var m = new Date();

  if (m.getHours() < 12) timeSuffix = "AM" 
  else timeSuffix = "PM";

  dateString =
    (days[m.getDay()]) + " " +  
    ("0" + (m.getMonth()+1)).slice(-2) +"/"+
    ("0" + m.getDate()).slice(-2) + "/" +
    m.getFullYear() + " " +
    (("0" + m.getHours()).slice(-2) % 12) + ":" +
    ("0" + m.getMinutes()).slice(-2) + " " + timeSuffix;
    // Ex: "MONDAY 10/03/2016 15:13:27"

  dateStringLong = 
    "It's " + 
    (("0" + m.getHours()).slice(-2) % 12) + ":" +
    ("0" + m.getMinutes()).slice(-2) + " " + timeSuffix + " on " +
    (days[m.getDay()]).toLowerCase().capitalize() + ", " +
    (months[m.getMonth()]).toLowerCase().capitalize() + " " +
    m.getDate() + dateSuffix[("" + m.getDate()).slice(-1)] + ", " +
    m.getFullYear();
    // Ex: "It's 15:13 on Monday, October 3rd, 2016" 

  // set the content of the element with the ID time to the formatted string
  if (switchVal==0) document.getElementById('time').innerHTML = dateString;
  else if (switchVal==1) document.getElementById('time').innerHTML = dateStringLong;

  // call function again in 1s
  setTimeout(updateClock, 1000);
}
updateClock(); // initial call
Maybe you meant it's nigh on impossible to write a secure application that makes network requests, but I don't see any reason that should be true either. All the tools to create secure, asymmetrically encrypted connections are still available to you?

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

Read posted:

I think Honeyview will do the latter, but the former I'm not so sure about. I don't have any images large enough to cause it to hang (maybe because most of my pictures are on my SSD?).

It's not something I really need to deal with that often. Back when I was more into stop motion animation I would often roll through the source photos from the camera to get a feel for the animation before I actually processed them to video, and being able to scroll quickly to later parts of the sequence was useful. Some of those high res shots would take longer to display than I liked. But like you suggest, maybe my last few disk upgrades make this a moot point.

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Khablam
Mar 29, 2012

Read posted:

What protections besides privilege escalation control are being mitigated? Even if all protections are mitigated, it's silly to claim it's "nigh on impossible" to write a secure application. Here's a snippet of JS I wrote for a webpage clock display, it is trivial to extend to show a graphical clock. Data is sourced from the local system clock.

Maybe you meant it's nigh on impossible to write a secure application that makes network requests, but I don't see any reason that should be true either. All the tools to create secure, asymmetrically encrypted connections are still available to you?
I'm not sure you understand the problem.

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