The Acrobat.com Blog

PDF Support in Acrobat.com and Buzzword

2008-09-04T21:20:01Z

This post looks at some of the ways in which PDF files can be used with Acrobat.com. In addition to offering the ability to create five PDFs, there are a number of ways that Acrobat.com helps you work with PDF files.

]]> 1. Store and share PDFs (and other files)
The first and most obvious way that Acrobat.com helps you work with PDF files is that it provides an online location accessible from any Internet connected computer where you can upload and store your PDFs.

Once you have uploaded your PDFs to Acrobat.com, you can easily share them with others. Acrobat.com can send email notifications to your colleagues, with a link to the online PDF file.

The invitation looks like this, with a thumbnail of the document along with a link to the document itself:

You might be thinking, "but I can just email the PDF to others - why bother to upload it?" There are a lot of reasons to store rather than forward your PDFs. For one thing, email is hardly an easy way to manage files, especially when they get large. Some email systems won't even allow sending large attachments. Furthermore, keeping your PDFs online makes them available to you from any computer you from which log in. Read on to learn more advantages to storing your PDFs on Acrobat.com.

2. Preview PDFs (and other files)
When your colleagues receive and follow the link to your online PDF, they will be taken directly to the document, displayed in a Flash-based preview form. Acrobat.com creates this preview version for all uploaded PDFs - and many other document types. The preview is fast and easy to navigate, and viewers can choose to download the PDF directly from the preview page, making the whole process simple and convenient.

3. Embed PDFs (and other files)
While it's always been possible to view PDFs within a browser using the reader browser add-in, Acrobat.com now offers another way to deliver PDF content in a browser. With a click of the document's "Copy Embed Code" button, you can paste a reading "widget" directly into your web page. Unlike the Reader add-in, the widget only takes up a small portion of the page, though you can expand it to take up the entire page. An example is shown below.

4. Export Buzzword documents to PDF
Of course, most documents began their life as something other than a PDF file. Adobe Buzzword now provides a great way to author a rich document - complete with graphics, tables, links and comments. And when the authoring / editing process is complete, you can simply export the document to PDF for archiving or distribution.

We often get asked about adding the ability to import PDF files into Buzzword. We certainly understand the need: we've probably all gotten documents in PDF format, and wanted to edit them - something needs changing or updating - only to discover that the document cannot be edited.

Unfortunately, while the PDF format is a very useful container that makes documents portable - across platforms and output devices - it is generally not the right format for storing documents that need to be edited by arbitrary applications. A PDF document is often closer to a printed version of the document than the original raw content.

The actual contents of a PDF file can vary widely from one file to the next. A PDF can contain text, images, complete files (e.g. an Excel file), fonts that may be required to render the document, and now can include interactive content, such as Flash applications.

The best suggestion we have for the moment is to use Acrobat, which has some rather sophisticated techniques for parsing through a PDF file and, if needed, exporting it to many common file formats.

5. Acrobat.com as online support for PDF commenting
Acrobat.com provides great support for collaborating on PDFs with others - and this can be started directly from Acrobat. With a PDF loaded in Acrobat, just select "Send for Shared Review" from the Comments menu. Acrobat will prompt you to log into Acrobat.com, and create a new version of the PDF, appending "_review" to the file name. It will then provide the ability to send a link to the PDF - which will be stored on Acrobat.com - to your colleagues for commenting.

The new PDF on Acrobat.com will then aggregate comments from your reviewers, all in one web-accessible location.

6. Online support for collecting PDF form data
Finally, you can use the same approach described above to collect input from PDF forms using Acrobat.com. With a form-enabled PDF loaded in Acrobat, choose "Distribute Form..." from the Acrobat Forms menu. Again, you'll be prompted to log in to Acrobat.com, and provide email addresses for recipients who will receive an email containing a link to the PDF.

In this case, Acrobat will create a copy of the original PDF, appending "_responses" to the original title. The file will be stored on Acrobat.com, and will collect data from up to 500 respondents

Adding Value to PDFs
It's clear that Acrobat.com is a great supporting resource for all manner of work with PDF files. If you haven't done so already, get an account on Acrobat.com - it's free and takes less than a minute. We think you'll be impressed with the added value.

Research on Buzzword's Effectiveness

2008-08-14T16:21:44Z

Guest post by Phil Ice, Ed.Dﾠ.

(Dr. Ice is currently the Director of Course Design, Research & Development at American Public University System. He has been using Buzzword in his teaching for the past year, and has conducted extensive research on the impact of using Buzzword versus alternatives.)

In the traditional online classroom students complete papers and projects in Word and submit them to the instructor as an email attachment. When the project is collaborative in nature, the typical workflow model involves using the track changes and commenting feature. At the point that a project is deemed complete the changes and comments are removed and passed to the instructor, via an email attachment, who adds yet another layer of comments and markups.ﾠ

In the spirit of web 2.0, an alternative to the above process has emerged in the form of free, online document editors. Buzzword, Google Docs and Zoho are some of the best known products in this sphere. A core function among these is the ability to create a document online and invite others to view and / or collaborate. Other features vary by product and include the ability to include tables, images and other fundamental features found in Word. However, the means of editing vary significantly from product to product.ﾠ

In four online, graduate-level, education courses students (n = 78) were asked to submit group projects using Word and Buzzword in alternating fashion. Buzzword was selected from the available online document collaboration tools as it offers several unique features, including pagination, intuitive media editing mechanisms and a visually oriented sharing mechanism.

]]> Evidence

Several types of evidence were reviewed to assess the efficacy of this technique. Document analysis was given the most weight. The average document submitted was 9.75 pages in length. The mean occurrence of non-text based items (e.g. hyperlinks, graphics, tables, etc.) was 5.1 for Word submissions and 14.3 for Buzzword based submissions.ﾠ

Open ended surveys were conducted with volunteers revealed that students were more likely to use graphics, charts, links, etc in Buzzword because of the ease of inclusion. Eleven students specifically stated that they did not include non-text sources in Word documents because they viewed the processes and subsequent modification as not being a fluid, user-friendly process.ﾠ

This proves to be very important in determining the effectiveness of a writing environment because, as the survey also revealed, students are more likely to explain more complex concepts using a combination of text and non-text based materials. The majority of participants expressed the view that it was easier to express themselves at a higher cognitive level when they could present material using multiple media sources. This concept is substantiated by Mayer's work with multi-media learning.
ﾠ
Documents produced by students were analyzed to determine if differences existed with respect to cognitive engagement as a function of the medium in which the artifacts were created. Analysis revealed that instances of higher order thought (those processes that move beyond recall of information to require critical analysis and evaluation) were prevalent more than two times more frequently in artifacts created using Buzzword than Word. Though more research is needed, the interview data described above, indicates that the manifestation of higher order thought is a function of multimedia presentation capabilities.ﾠ

In other research involving Buzzword, students (n = 238) were asked to use a variety of document creation tools (Word, Google Docs and Buzzword) as a document collaboration and submission tools, over the course of a semester. Key findings from this study were:ﾠ

The vast majority of students (n = 202) preferred Buzzword. Qualitative analysis revealed that the sharing architecture (n = 143), ease of use (n = 127), ability to easily rearrange resources (n = 107) and ability to easily integrate resources (n = 98) were the themes associated with this preference. Of the remainder, 11 preferred Google Docs and 15 preferred Microsoft Word. The theme associated with the preference for these later groups was familiarity with Word or Google Docs.
The majority of students (n = 159) viewed Buzzword not as a true document editor, but as a multimedia creation tool. As an example, document analysis found frequent manipulation (n = 92) of documents to fit within a 1024X768 viewable area without scrolling.
The concept of a Buzzword being a personal reflective space was common among 72% of students over 34 years old. As an example these students frequently developed a document on their own and then shared it with classmates. In contrast, 82% of students 34 and younger recognized it as a collaborative tool and began workflow projects by sharing a common document. Qualitative analysis revealed that these younger students frequently (68%) likened Buzzword to a Wiki or similar collaborative tool. In contrast, only 27% of older students made this association.

Impact on Other Measures of Effectivenessﾠ

In addition to the learning effectiveness and student satisfaction indicators discussed above, there are indications that instructor satisfaction may be impacted. Six instructors, who used Buzzword as a submission mechanism, were interviewed and 5 indicated a preference for the tool for the following reasons: 1. they perceived student artifacts of being of higher quality, and 2. the sharing architecture was perceived as being more efficient than accessing artifacts via email attachments. The sixth instructor indicated no preference. While document analysis tends to validate the perception of higher quality artifacts being generated, more research is needed to validate the perception of efficiency.

ﾠ

Acrobat.com Collaboration Workflow

2008-08-12T01:05:00Z

At a recent education conference, it was gratifying to hear several stories from Acrobat.com users, detailing how they use our applications to work together more effectively.

One of the common threads was the degree to which Acrobat.com enabled the workflow required in developing electronic materials. This was a pleasant surprise to hear - as you've probably seen, we focus quite a bit on collaboration. However, we have not yet explicitly developed capabilities that facilitate workflow. This would include things like mapping out the steps in a process, assigning tasks based on roles, supporting complete annotation of the process throughout, etc.

]]> And yet these industrious users had discovered that, even without those administrative features, Acrobat.com nonetheless provided a lightweight and easy way to share documents, and move them through a process en route to publication.

The primary collaboration capabilities we currently offer are described in a previous post, entitled Document Collaboration. The new insight here was the ease with which these users had strung together our applications to get their work done. A generalization of the workflow is shown in the graphic below.

Step 1: First, it's clear that the documents under consideration in these workflows are essentially text documents. They generally start out in Buzzword, though often they began life elsewhere - in Microsoft Word, or even an email - and then are imported or pasted into Buzzword. We heard from all these users that Buzzword was the ideal place to work through multiple revisions on a document. The ease and value of Buzzword for multiple editors going through several revisions was described in a previous post entitled Email is not a Collaboration Platform.

Step 2. After creating the document, don't email it as an attachment: just share it with your co-author by clicking on the Share button. You add your collaborators' email addresses or, if you've shared a document with them before, just choose their name off the drop-down list.

Step 3. But document collaboration often involves more than just text documents: our users collect support material in a variety of formats, from graphic images to spreadsheets to forms. Acrobat.com has proven to be a very useful utility for storing and sharing these assets, whether they are imported as graphics into Buzzword, or used on their own - say, in a PDF portfolio.

Step 4. Authors can easily expand the circle of reviewers or editors on their documents - either in Buzzword or in Acrobat.com - simply by sending an invitation to the desired parties. Have you ever wondered whether you've sent the document to all the appropriate people? One really useful feature of the Acrobat.com applications is that you can see all the people participating on the document:

Not only that, but you know who has opened the document, and which version they've seen. This is incredibly useful when, for example, you're working under a deadline, and you need to know where all the reviewers stand.

Step 5. There always comes the time where you need to come together to iron out details and open issues. If you're not all located in the same place, this can be tricky - a multi-party conference call certainly helps, but it's so much more productive when the participants can all look at the same document at the same time. ConnectNow is invaluable for this - not only does it have screen sharing, but it even provides a conference call number for you to use; or you can use the built-in VOIP capability to share the conversation through your computer. If you'd like to see ConnectNow in action, check out our recorded e-seminar.

Step 6. Now is the time for final edits and polish - whether you return to Buzzword, or export your document to another format (see the entry, entitled A Case Study in Design - Using InDesign, where the process at this point moved to InDesign). In any event, one very effective way to capture and preserve the final artifact is in a PDF document. As mentioned earlier, if you want to package up all the artifacts used in a project, you can use Acrobat to create a PDF portfolio. This is a PDF file that acts as a container for a variety of files - PDFs, Excel files, images, Word documents - and Acrobat provides an elegant user interface for navigating through those files, viewing a preview of each and, if needed, launching them into their native editors.

Step 7. Regardless of the form in which your document ended up, Acrobat.com is a really useful way to upload them and make them available to others. Our preview capability makes it particularly easy to share the contents with others - they won't have to download many of the files to view them. However, if your audience needs a local copy for viewing and archiving, Acrobat.com offers one-click download capability.

We recognize that there's much more involved in supporting sophisticated document workflow, and that Acrobat.com has a ways to go before we can fully support all these options. Still, there appears to be a lot of people out there using our free services tio get work done faster and more effectively than before. If you have a document workflow story to share, please add it as a comment, or drop us a line at acrobat.com_feedback@adobe.com.

A great way to accomplish a school project!

2008-08-08T18:09:12Z

(This entry is authored by Ruchi Kumar, a graduate student at the School of Information at UC Berkeley, working as a business systems analyst here at Adobe for a summer internship.)

So who does the Acrobat.com services benefit? One possible scenario is for students at grad schools (like me!). Many courses are project oriented with typical team sizes of 3-4 people. This brings up the scheduling issue - with everyone having their own busy schedules and priorities, it gets difficult to setup a time and space where all can physically meet. In the past, we were forced to juggle with a wide range of collaboration tools to solve these concerns.

]]> Previous semester, for one of my school projects, my team decided to use Google Docs to collaborate on the project reports and to review it in real time. We also had to conduct several meetings using IM and phone. During these meetings, across the several documents we had, trying to get everyone looking over the exact same thing in the same document was quite a task! Further, for keeping track of different versions of the word document and the powerpoints, we created a wiki (pbwiki). All of this was still okay, but it was scattered over different places. The worst problem was when we had the content ready but had to spend hours formatting it all over again to make the camera-ready copy. As you know, Google Docs doesn't take too well to printing its documents - one loses the formatting.

Now, with the Acrobat.com suite, the usage scenario is much simpler. Buzzword - an online word processor, allows us to write together and have it print exactly as it shows on the browser. One can add comments inline and drag and drop images to precise spots in the document! ConnectNow - a virtual meeting tool, allows us to conduct impromptu meetings and have synchronous VOIP/telephonic conversations. Screen sharing helps in maintaining reference to the context while video chat allows for an implicit transfer of more contextual cues. Share enables document sharing using URLs, thereby eliminating the numerous back and forth emails. No more scattered information as all of these services are accessible from one seamless account id!

Having now seen the Acrobat.com team from the inside, I'm further excited about the latest developments here. Having had sneak previews into some of the tools in the pipeline, I am looking forward to their release and integration into the acrobat.com suite! These set of tools together have a strong potential to facilitate the way we students work together while collaborating on school projects.

Take control (of another user’s screen, that is!)

2008-08-01T18:00:18Z

Have you tried the remote control feature in ConnectNow yet? This useful functionality enables you to control another computer from your own desktop. You can be sitting at your desk in Chicago, logged in to your ConnectNow meeting room with your colleague from Tokyo, and, with permission, take control of your colleague’s computer.

Here’s a real example. I have a friend named David who works at a startup software company. OK, he IS the company: chief software architect, QA manager, documentation writer, and technical support engineer. David has created a good piece of software for retail businesses and he takes pride in being available to his customers around the clock for technical support. The problem is, his phone does ring and he spends too much time trying to walk people through troubleshooting procedures. I told him there is a better way.

]]> David can get an Acrobat.com account and create his own ConnectNow meeting room. When a customer calls with a problem, David can send an email with the URL of the meeting room to the customer. Once they are both in the meeting room, David has the customer share their screen. Then, David clicks the Request Control button. The customer clicks a confirmation message to pass control. Now, here’s the beautiful thing – David now has complete control of the customer’s computer. The customer can watch as David fixes the problem and since they are still on the phone together, David can verbally explain what he is doing. This is an incredibly efficient and fast way to do technical support -- and boy are customers wowed.

As a personal example, my husband does the same thing with family members. As the resident computer tutor for our family, my husband received calls from grandparents, parents, cousins, nieces, and nephews to fix their problems. He frequently spent countless hours on the phone trying to help, shall we say, the more “technologically challenged” members of the family who lived far from us. If he had been able to go to their home, he could have fixed the issues himself in just minutes. Now, he goes into his ConnectNow meeting room, sends the family member the URL via email, asks them to share their screen, requests control, and BOOM, computer is fixed and family is once again impressed by his skills.

The remote control feature is one of the most powerful options in ConnectNow . Give it a try and let us know the creative ways you are using remote control.

To see a one minute demo of the remote control feature, go to the ConnectNow Quick Start Guide and click “Requesting Control of a Shared Screen.”

A Case Study in Design - Using InDesign

2008-07-26T06:22:47Z

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:

ﾠ

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.

]]> ﾠAs I was saying, one of our documents recently underwent cosmetic surgery at the hands of the Buzzword PR team. The document, the Acrobat.com overview, had been an object of extensive collaboration between Buzzword and the PR team.

Eventually, we signed off on the content; for the next couple of days, we heard nothing from the group working on the document with us. Eyebrows were raised - not in consternation but rather in interest: what were they up to?

A few days after the mysterious operation began, the design team resurfaced with the document's content unharmed—but with its appearance dramatically modified. What once had been a caterpillar of text was now a sleekly designed butterfly of a document. As we soon found out, the PR team had snatched the text from Buzzword and bundled it off to Adobe InDesign, where they could apply a grid to to the content we'd written and thus arrange it neatly into space-optimizing, aesthetically appealing columns.
ﾠ
We know that Buzzword on its own is capable of truly lovely work—"visually stunning" as one user told us—and so upon seeing this triumphant piece of design, we had to investigate. What exactly had happened to our document, and where did they have it while they were dressing it up? These questions led to a very informative conversation with Colleen, the project manager overseeing document production. She patiently answered our questions about the transformation from text to—um, docufly—butterment—er, polished document. Here's what we learned:ﾠ

The document, comprising the overview's content, was drafted entirely in Buzzword and shared with team members in various parts of the country. It went through a handful of evolutions for about two weeks before being finished and finally approved. We were very much present and involved for this part of the creation process. (The shot below of the history bar might give you an idea of the iterations the document endured before it was ready to be published.)

Shortly thereafter, it migrated to InDesign by way of the old copy'n'paste trick. Once there, the text could be put in a template of predetermined styles that immediately applied to what was being imported, including font, line spacing, and margins. In keeping with their usual practice, InDesign is where the designers came up with the look of the document.

Since the formatting doesn't matter before it's in InDesign, the text can start out in a number of places; for instance, Word documents can be imported directly to InDesign, as can .rtf files - both of which can start as Buzzword documents and then be exported (this transition from Buzzword to InDesign will get smoother in the not-too-distant future). Regardless of the number of steps involved, the finished result is sleek and simple, clean and well-organized, thanks to the collaboration in Buzzword and the polishing work of InDesign.ﾠ

How delightful that this collaboration yielded such a lovely piece of work—the textual portion (writing, editing, reviewing) done in Buzzword, and the designing done externally. We're working hard to tap into the ways that people are using Buzzword in concert with such external tools and figure out how the mechanisms work together to come up with really great-looking documents.ﾠ We want to spend some effort here talking about, and hearing about, how to create attractive items of text. InDesign was one answer to the issue discussed here, but we're also interested in hearing from you about how you work with others, using Buzzword and Acrobat.com to create polished and professional documents. Is InDesign part of the equation, or perhaps Photoshop or Illustrator? Who do you collaborate with, and how do you divide the work? Either comment below, or send us a note at buzzword_feedback@adobe.com.

Seminar Today - Acrobat.com APIs and Cocomo

2008-07-22T14:25:01Z

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.

Introducing: Spell Checking in More Languages

2008-07-18T14:27:44Z

[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.

]]> You may notice some subtle changes in our UI to make room for this feature. The “misspelled word” count in the lower-right corner now flies out to give you access to the current language. We’ve got 19 different dictionaries to choose from.

What if your language still isn’t one of the ones we support? Previously, you had the option to turn off the display of the red underline that indicates a misspelled word, but Buzzword was still taking the time to spell-check your documents. Why? Because this is a personal display preference, and you might share the document with someone else who hasn’t chosen that setting.

So we now also support “No language — Don't spell check this document” as an option. This has three big advantages over the old way:

Buzzword won't take the time to mark your document with red underlines that you won't see anyway.

When you share a document, you don't have some people seeing the underlines and others not.

If some of your documents are in different languages, you can enable spell-checking for the documents in a language for which we have a dictionary, and leave it off for the others.

We know that we still have more work to do to be truly “world-wide.” You can expect to see our user interface get translated fairly soon, and we’re working on expanding our font support to go beyond the “Latin-1” subset. Support for languages written right-to-left or vertically is something some of you have asked for; although those are harder problems and will take longer, we do hope to get there eventually.

It’s been a lot of fun working with the folks here at Adobe who speak various languages to test this new feature, and after reading all the feedback and forum messages asking for this feature, I’m excited to know that we’re going to make a lot of you happy with this. Please let us know how it works out for you!

Design Collaboration

2008-07-17T08:51:25Z

Beyond the Walls

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.

]]> Designers easily keep aware of what others are working on, we chat over our shoulders to consider design alternatives, and we have a constant design review as other team members, engineers, and product managers visit the floor. We are in an open environment and we've seen great things come out of the design team since the walls came down!

Beyond the (Virtual) Walls

Physical walls are not our only challenge when it comes to collaborative design for Acrobat.com. The Acrobat.com team was formed by an existing Adobe Hosted Services design team and the Buzzword design team. Two teams existing on two coasts. So, the question became, how do we extend our collaborative successes without sitting side by side all day?

We found the answer in our very own product offering. We all became loyal ConnectNow users in a hurry. A common internal chat solution helps, but when 1 picture = 1,000 words…

We are constantly moving into our connect rooms to show our work. There, we share not only our screens but also our webcams. Its face to face collaboration, complete with online whiteboards. We also began to author all of our designs in Buzzword. This allowed every member of the team to constantly see the most recent design thoughts and to toss around new concepts as the work progressed.

The acrobat.com suite has extended our collaborative workspace and changed the way we design.

How has it changed the way you work?

Another Buzzword Version Launched

2008-07-15T19:18:33Z

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.

]]> Watch Your Language!

Buzzword's first step toward internationalization is a small but important one: we now have spell checking dictionaries available for some 19 Western European languages. This means that if you're writing in, say, Danish you no longer need to turn off the automatic flagging of misspelled words. You can just click on the new Spell Check Language choice in the Document menu, and pick the language with which you'd like to use to check your spelling.

There's another subtle and elegant way to pick your spell check language. If you have flagged words in your document, just hover over the flagged word count at the bottom of the Buzzword screen, click on the document's current language dictionary and voila - the new language pick list appears.

We realize this is just a first step - there are many more languages to support, and many additional ways we need to honor the complete native language experience in Buzzword - menus, error messages, documentation, etc. However, we're thrilled with this new capability and hope it will make life a little easier for our writers on or from The Continent.

Invitations Extended

We've heard and noticed that sharing Buzzword documents is sometimes difficult - most often due to the need for you the author to send invitations via email to your collaborators. Emails get lost, flagged as spam or sometimes your collaborators just don't have access to email at the time when you want to share a document with them.

One of our concerns was a kind of document spam - we didn't want our users to be besieged with unsolicited and unwanted documents in their organizers. So we required email invitations to be sent to any "new" collaborator in Buzzword - that is, anyone with whom you hadn't already shared a document.

Now, Buzzword has a setting that allows "unknown" authors to share documents with you. In fact, now by default documents can appear in your organizer from anyone. To change this setting, go to Settings & Preferences under the Buzzword menu, and uncheck the option that reads, "Automatically accept sharing requests from unknown users."

There are a few other conveniences in there - for example, we now reveal your collaborators' email address when you hover over their tile in the collaborator bar at the bottom of the screen.

Export Open Documents

We've learned that there's a vocal and active community of folks who use Open Office, and all its various derivatives. Many of these people are interested in moving to Buzzword, but have been reluctant or unwilling as long as we didn't provide a way to more easily migrate their documents (and also to preserve copies of Buzzword documents as ODT files for safe-keeping).

With this current release, we've gotten part way there: you can now export Buzzword documents to ODT format. We realize the urgency in adding the ability to import - after all, that will encourage more Buzzword usage. We're actively working on ODT import - bear with us.

Keep the Faith

Generally, we're continuing to crank on new Buzzword features. We can't promise six-week turnarounds on each new version, but we're committed to regular updates so stay with us and watch as Buzzword grows.

Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat.com

2008-07-14T16:00:00Z

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.

]]> The Adobe Reader 9 toolbar has a create PDF button which automatically launches the Acrobat.com desktop application for PDF conversion. In addition to PDF creation, Adobe Reader 9 also includes the ability to upload and share documents directly from the Reader toolbar. The toolbar also include menu items to directly launch your Adobe ConnectNow meeting room and meet with others online and launch Adobe Buzzword to edit and collaborate on documents with others.

When working with Adobe Acrobat 9, Reader 9 users can participate in a Shared Review for PDF documents and filling and submitting forms using Acrobat.com. Using Reader 9, you can also participate in live collaboration on PDF files with other Reader or Acrobat users. Collaborate live allows you to chat and share your page views within the context of a PDF document with others who are currently viewing the same PDF document.

For more details about how Acrobat 9 and Reader 9 work with Acrobat.com attend our seminar on July 15 - "Acrobat connections: Introduction to the steps and workflows through which Acrobat.com works with and complements Acrobat and Reader" at http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/aclearn/. More details on other online Acrobat.com seminars can be found on our forum.

Let us know what you think about Adobe Reader 9 and the Acrobat.com desktop application. We love to hear your feedback. Send us your feedback at acrobat.com_feedback@adobe.com.

Thank you for reading
Mangesh, Acrobat.com Product Manager

To Serif or Not To Serif? Regarding Online Readability

2008-07-11T21:40:45Z

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

]]>

Regardless of medium, high contrast between type color and page color always contributes to optimal reading conditions. Not surprisingly, readers show a strong preference for black text on a white background (though it's not strictly necessary; if you simply loathe the combination of white and black, any reasonably contrasting color duo will do). When in doubt, check your color scheme on Snook's Color Contrast Check.

To state the obvious: the more clearly you can see the text, the easier it is to read. This means that the higher the resolution, the better the readability. Printed text is generally of higher resolution, which is why it's generally easier to read than on-screen text, though high-resolution computer monitors are doggedly pursuing equality, and some are proving worthy adversaries. This has several ramifications:

For online reading, sans serif fonts are easier on the eyes (if you need convincing, Alex Poole has put together a compelling argument). This isn't to say that using Minion (a serif font) will prevent readers from understanding what you're saying; they'll just have to work slightly harder to recognize the words on the screen. One possible reason is that on-screen, the resolution isn't good enough to display crisp serifs; this, in turn, results in letters a little more blurry and slightly less recognizable.
Readers of printed text, on the other hand, seem to prefer serifs on their letters (at least in North America—there's some evidence that Europeans go for sans serif fonts). The argument for this preference, while controversial among the experts, is intuitively appealing: serifs seem to serve as "horizontal cues" that guide the eye along a line of text.
A good summary of the two font types can be read here.

For the same reason you should consider sans serif fonts for on-screen readability—in the name of crispness—the inter-line spacing within a paragraph should be sufficiently large so that the lines of text don't start blurring together. If you can, try to keep the ratio of line height (the distance from the bottom of one line to the bottom of another) to font size (the height of a Capital Letter) at 1.5 or so.

One more thing about lines: pay attention to their length. The jury is still out on whether or not they should be epically long or reasonably short; conclusive statements from various studies differ, though never drastically (some say 40-80 characters, others say 35-95, and one writer claims that 72 is just right). The take-home point? Don't go to extremes. Tiny lines of fewer than 10 words and Proustian lines of more than 18 words should be fixed. You can take care of line length issues by playing with font selection, font size, or margin widths.

According to Jakob Nielsen, when someone first opens a web page, they'll decide whether or not to stay after only 20 words. That doesn't give you much time—maybe a few seconds. So make the most of it: in the initial scan of the page, the reader must be able to extract information about what he'll find there if he stays and reads it more closely.

ﾠ

So the next time you're writing a newsletter (in Buzzword, of course) to share with your band's groupies, remember this: if you adhere to these general guidelines, your fans will be much more likely to read every single word about how your band's (only) song got played on the local college radio station last week at 3 AM. No doubt they all stayed awake to hear it; but this way they'll get to relive the moment as they read the obstacle-free article you send them from beginning to end.
ﾠ
For the typophiles out there, here are a few recommendations from the Buzzword team for further reading:

1. Bringhurst, Robert: The Elements of Typographic Style — a good modern perspective for a general audience.
2. Tschichold, Jan: The Form of the Book — a seminal historical work.
3. Dowding, Geoffrey: Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type — for the real die-hards!ﾠ

Finally, let us know your opinions on these issues! They're by no means written in stone, and we'd be glad to hear your thoughts. Hit us with 'em at buzzword@adobe.com.

Seminar Today - Acrobat.com Document Services

2008-07-08T12:05:47Z

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.

Acrobat.com Podcast #2

2008-07-07T16:32:27Z

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

Vignette about ConnectNow:
• Remote tech support

You can listen to or download the MP3 file here.

We've also added the ability to subscribe to the podcasts, either by your RSS feed reader or iTunes.

ConnectNow Seminar - Watch It Now!

2008-07-01T22:46:21Z

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.