IIRC, they added the sandboxing because it was pretty much the only thing they could do to bring any level of security to the product.

Surface area is definitely a problem, I've never understood why so many of those features were integrated into the reader program. PDF as a cross platform format for printing was brilliant, trying to turn it into all those other things was a huge mistake.

But, they're hardly the only ones to do that sort of stupid thing. MS added macroes seemingly to invent the macro virus.

If you read the PDF specification, all the incorporated functionality is a part of the spec. For viewers to be compliant with the latest version of the specification, they need to support all that nonsense or pick and choose what they want to support.

I'd imagine that most PDF viewers aren't completely compliant, even FoxIt, but I don't think they really care. They just add the features everyone uses (fonts, images, etc) and don't worry about the rest.

As for JS, people do use it, but it's rare. I've encountered a few organizations that actually require it to be on for their everyday tasks. I believe most of them used it for distributing surveys or handling forms in the PDF. For Adobe to be so resilient to disabling it by default, there must be a portion of the user base that does use JS, I'd venture a rather important portion.

Good work on finally not defaulting to Program Files!

But now I can't install to my normal path of G:\Games\GOG.com because the period is illegal! Banish the periods!

Well, a quick beg for my part to the packaging team:

For those of us who burn to CD and DVD, when creating the new installers, could you please have the installer script ask where the next chunk is instead of unceremoniously quitting? Thanks!

This would be great for burning games like Alan Wake and Riddick to 2 DVDs, because they're too large for one single-layer DVD.

Why not use 7zip or winrar to split the files up. Then the parts can be stored on separate dvd's and rejoined once you've loaded the files from the disc onto your pc.

Ah, that's why the sand has a habit of spilling all over the OS with vulnerabilities which must be fixed every couple weeks?

Noticed as well, It also remembers your last installpath. So now all my gog's go to the right place on my disk. wo me doing much else that accepting the EULA :D

Am I missing something or did the GOG staff get rid of the file integrity check as far as this brand new installer is concerned? It was a pretty useful feature...

Though it running twice was a bit annoying (once before admin permission is asked for and granted, and once afterwards). I believe it's still there for the multifile installers (ie. those installers that are >2 GB).

Good to know, thank you for your insightful post.

Are you sure this is because of the installer? It used to be on a game-by-game basis. For instance, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2: Triple Thrill Pack won't install to a path which includes a period, even though it uses the old installer. When I asked GOG support about that, they said it was a requirement of the game itself, not the installer.

Most of the games between 1995 and 2000 had their default installation to %ProgramFiles%\GOGcom while the rest had it to %ProgramFiles%\GOG.com
The game may (or may not) work in a folder with a period in its name, but you weren't given the option, because the installer didn't allow you to type it. Thus it's an installer restriction, set there so the game will work. Especially since Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 didn't have any idea it was been installed, so it couldn't complain about the period in the installation directory.

You misunderstand me. Yes, of course the restriction is in the installer, but it has been put there deliberately only for those games which will not work if they are installed to a path containing a period. As such, it is not a restriction that is built into the installer framework itself, but rather something that is configured in a particular installer to facilitate the correct functioning of the game it installs.

So yes, from a technical standpoint, it's a restriction of the (individual) installer. From a functional standpoint, it's a restriction of the (individual) game.