The Acrobat.com Blog

What with all the jubilation over Adobe FormsCentral (the simply amazing form-building-and-distributing service that we rolled out recently) we almost forgot to remind you all to check out the new look of Acrobat.com. We’re sure you’ve noticed that there’s a sleek new interface in Adobe cloud town; so it might be too late for us to give you any news about the redesign. …Oh, but what the heck—we’ll dive in and take a look anyway. Major changes to the Acrobat.com family’s wardrobe—those based on your feedback, in fact—are mentioned here; for the details, why not head over and check it out for yourself!

 

 

1. From the organizer to the file

In the past, documents and files have opened with just a single click; now, try double-clicking to open your files. This way, you won’t open any files accidentally, and it feels a bit more like your desktop file-opening experience.

 

2. Your account

We’ve expanded your account menu; now, by clicking on the little person icon in the upper right, you’ll see three options (My Information, My Preferences, and My Subscriptions), where before there was simply one big box. This way, it’ll be much easier to click to just the place you want to go, instead of digging around the general “My Account” dialog box. Don’t forget to add a picture (from your computer, Flickr, or Google!) to make your account super customized.

 

3. New: The app switcher!

Now that we have all these neat tools to use in the Acrobat.com cloud, we’re making it easy to switch from one to the other. Are you in Acrobat.com and suddenly realize that you have a large file to send? Head over to the app switcher and select SendNow; it’ll open in a new window so as not to interrupt your work. This is also the new doorway to ConnectNow, so if you need to start a meeting, you can do it from here. If you’re a CS Review subscriber, you can use the app switcher to get to your CS Review dashboard.

 

4. Main menus

Since all the quick-start buttons that you know and love (Upload, Import, Create PDF, etc.) live happily on the left side of the window, the main menu items have been given a new place all their own: the right side of the window. Look here for the above-mentioned app switcher, the help menu, and your account menu (which now includes a one-click link to your Adobe Store account). This is also where to find the document menus when you’re in one of the authoring applications (e.g. Buzzword or Tables).

 

5. Re-formatting the formatting menus in Tables and Buzzword

Speaking of Buzzword and Tables, the formatting menus in these apps have gotten a makeover themselves: with the new light grey theme comes increased clarity and usability in these menus, as they’re no longer hidden away in “pleats” and aren’t animated. Just click the category you’d like to use (Text formatting, or Lists, or Images, etc.) and the relevant formatting options appear. These formatting treats are altogether new to Tables, so now you can add some emphasis to your tables’ input. Also of note: in the dark grey header bar, you’ll now see your document name prominently displayed, along with the little “x” box, which you can use to close the document and go back to your organizer view.

Feel free to let us know your opinion of the redesign by commenting here or by writing to us: acrobat.com_feedback [at] adobe.com; as always, we appreciate hearing your thoughts.