This might go without saying, but let's say it anyway: at Buzzword, we're interested in making things look good. This interest applies not only to the application itself, but also to the final product that the user creates using the application. Bearing this in mind, imagine our delight when our PR team took a document we'd finished together in Buzzword and redesigned it, returning with the following:
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Note: The widget used here is from Acrobat.com's Share; we copied the embed code directly from Share, and inserted it directly into this post. Feel free to flip through and read the file.
...WHAT?! We were thrilled with the results, but also intrigued: how did they do that? Although we'd love to claim responsibility and say it was all done in Buzzword, that's not exactly the case. Here's the full story.
Come join us for a seminar on Tuesday, July 22nd @ 11:30 am EDT / 8:30am PDT to learn more about Acrobat.com's developer web services and our progress with “Cocomo.” We’ll discuss the APIs available today and where we are headed, including when everyone will finally be able to try out “Cocomo.”
To join the seminar, simply go to http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/aclearn/. Enter as a guest and you will be taken to a Connect Pro room. The room will be opened 15 minutes before the start of the session. Conference call information will be provided inside the Connect room.
UPDATE: If you missed the eSeminar, the recording is available here.
[Today's post is authored by Andrew Greene, the developer responsible for bringing a host of new languages to Buzzword.]
We at Buzzword have always realized that the first two “W”s in www stand for “world-wide,” and we’ve been looking forward to the day when we could provide spell-checking in languages other than the dialect of English used here in the U.S.
One of the advantages of being a part of Adobe is access to a lot of world-class resources, including the spelling dictionaries that Adobe has licensed for use in our desktop products. With this week’s upgrade to Buzzword, we are pleased to respond to the many requests you’ve sent in asking for spell-checking in more languages.
At Adobe, we believe collaboration is a fundamental component of the design process. If you ever have the opportunity to take a tour of our corporate headquarters, you'll see that reflected right down to our physical work environment.
A visit to the design floor shows off the results of a recent renovation during which we gutted the traditional mix of office spaces and meeting rooms. Instead you will find a dynamic open workspace. Offices were replaced with desks, couches, smart boards, display stations and multiple surfaces covered with whiteboards. The result is a space that not only accommodates a collaborative team but actually promotes it.
The Buzzword team has delivered again - a mere six weeks after our last version, which appeared as part of the Acrobat.com launch in early June. We're very excited to be back in regular release cycles, and we have lots of great features planned (see Lisa's recent blog post for specifics).
This new release (our 10th in 14 months) has a few very important new capabilities, designed to broaden our appeal globally and to make it even easier to share documents.
Last week Adobe announced the availability of Adobe Reader 9. This new version of Reader has several exciting new features and capabilities. Steve Gottwals, product manager for Adobe Reader, did an extensive review of the new features of Reader 9 in his blog entry. From the Adobe website you can download a copy of Adobe Reader 9.0 now.
Adobe Reader 9 provides many simple ways to work with Acrobat.com. It includes the Acrobat.com desktop application built on the Adobe AIR technology. The Acrobat.com desktop application provides an easy way of interacting with Acrobat.com by dragging and dropping files and folders from your local computer directly into your Acrobat.com account, and browsing, previewing, sharing or publishing files directly from your desktop computer. The application can be minimized to a widget on your desktop providing one-click access to the Acrobat.com services.
There are myriad different opinions on what the best conditions are for reading text on a screen. Debates rage about whether or not to use serif fonts and how long a line of text should be. A surprisingly sensitive issue, and possibly without a clear resolution.ﾠ
Here we've tried to delineate a few of the more widely accepted tips on how to optimize readability. Although they can be forsaken in the name of personal style, they're generally considered the most conducive to easy reading. Here are a few key points plucked from various takes on the subject:ﾠ
This week's seminar on Document Services will be hosted by Fang Chang, and directed more toward developers and technical management.
Acrobat.com's Document Services provide a standards-based way for developers to easily add collaboration features - store, manage, and share documents - to new and existing applications. Using our Document Services, developers and their users can access files from anywhere there is an Internet connection. Learn more at our Developer Center.
Today's seminar is at 11:30 EDT / 8:30 PDT. To join the seminar, simply go to http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/aclearn/. Sign in as a guest and you will be taken to a ConnectPro room. The room will be opened 15 minutes before the start of the session. Conference call information will be provided inside the Connect room.
There's more information about these seminars on our forum, including the schedule for future sessions.
The second Acrobat.com podcast again features a discussion with David Coletta, and includes the following topics:
Buzzword design process
• Feedback email as source for new features
• Visual design and functional specifications
• Designer-developer interaction: how to interpret static designs
• The value of a good spec
• Buzzword excellent for writing specs
New feature discussion
• Focus on reducing speed bumps, improving the invitation process
• New language dictionaries
Yesterday Karen Tomlinson, our ConnectNow product manager, wrote an excellent post on the functionality and value of our new web conferencing application.
Today, Karen followed up by delivering our weekly seminar - again, focused on ConnectNow. For those interested who couldn't make it, we recorded the session using ConnectPro. You can view the seminar by going to the recorded session here. It's 43 minutes long, and definitely worth the time. Everyone who has seen ConnectNow in action has been really impressed; Karen's session will show you what everyone's been so excited about.
We're holding these seminars weekly all summer, every Tuesday at 11:30 EDT, 8:30 PDT. Next week, we'll be focusing on a more technical subject: Fang Chang, product manager for our developer tools and document APIs, will provide an in-depth view at the ways that developers can make use of our platform to build rich collaboration capabilities into their own applications.
For more information on the seminars, including the schedule and the logisitics for these seminars, follow this link to the posting on our forum.
