We all knew this day would come, and it’s finally here: the day the Acrobat.com blog heads back to the home farm, into the welcoming pages of our mother product. Yes, that’s right: we’re joining forces with the Acrobat blog! The way we see it, we’re all one big family: Acrobat and the online services, working together to help you and your team work together. That being the case, it’s time to round up the ducklings and bring all of our future posts about the Acrobat.com services to roost at the Acrobat blog; you’ll find us quacking contentedly over there about each of these services within the larger context of events and announcements for all of Acrobat. This way, you can get all your Acrobat-related information in one place. Just follow us over to the Acrobat blog and subscribe to our feed for the same fresh fodder all about the happy Acrobat family.
I just dug up an old interview that I did with Dave O., one of our fine engineers, a couple of months ago; somehow, it never made it up here to the blog. Now, in full original glory, here is Dave speaking about Acrobat.com and how he uses it. Enjoy!
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!
Acrobat.com's new design
Another year, another MAX, another few days of meeting and talking to customers, partners and co-workers about all the fantastic things they do with Adobe technology, and indeed, the challenges they face in what they do. One of my favorite things about my work is sitting down with a customer and brainstorming with them on how Adobe technology might be able to help them get their work done, including showing the new services at Adobe SendNow. Or in the case of one individual, impress her boss!
Another customer I spoke to already had a PDF-based “workflow” in place for collecting edits on documents and artwork from colleagues. The only issue – those colleagues were using Acrobat to edit the actual text in the PDF files! Although Acrobat is capable of doing that, sometimes you need to use the right tool for the right job, and in this case editing the actual text wasn’t the best option, as it becomes difficult to identify who had changed what, and if there was a major text edit, doing so may change the design too.
Instead, I suggested she try two things. One was to use the commenting tools in Acrobat (and Adobe Reader when enabled for commenting) and collect the comments from others by using Shared Reviews with Acrobat.com: IT resources were limited and unable to help with setting up servers and access controls – Acrobat.com to the rescue there!
Secondly, if all they wanted was to allow people to edit the text of the document, I suggested using Adobe Buzzword to allow others to collaboratively author and comment on the copy. Then when it was ready, they could easily place the final copy in to their Adobe InDesign CS5 layouts, convert the document to a high-quality PDF file, and send out for Shared Review as described above.
The response to those suggestions to use Acrobat.com with Acrobat? That they were sure to make many people in her company very happy. Sweet!
It’s been a great week at MAX for the Acrobat Solutions team and Adobe. For those of you that were there, THANK YOU! You will be able to watch the recordings of the sessions and keynotes on Adobe TV.
On Monday, a brilliant little gem of work-togetherness was documented on Adobe’s Digital Publishing blog: The New Yorker launches iPad edition using Adobe tools
For those of you who didn’t click on that link and kept right on reading (you know who you are), here’s the brief summary:
To create the new only-for-tablet version of the magazine, the design team from The New Yorker worked with Adobe’s Digital Magazine Solution and InDesign to create templates for the app’s HTML pages. This is a marked break from the typically rasterized content that appears in other digital publications (for example, the new digital version of Wired magazine, also completed with Adobe’s Digital Magazine Solution); since the features of The New Yorker are so text-heavy, and since they’re updated weekly, HTML was the perfectly flexible solution to allow for digital publication of the app’s super wordy articles instantly and often.
We’re sure you’ve used Tables in the past to keep track of various projects, and so we can assume you’ve noticed the little glasses icon in the upper menu bar and know exactly what it’s there for. Wait, what’s that? You don’t know? Well! It’s a good thing we’ve prepared this handy overview of viewing mechanisms in Tables! Read on to discover the ways in which you can manipulate the views of your data in Tables to increase your efficiency, use only relevant information, and save you from long hours of scrolling through rows and rows of information. Welcome to your new favorite features in Tables: Private Views and Filters.
Read more…
While we would never presume to tell you exactly how to use Acrobat.com authoring applications, we do think that it may come in handy to have a cheat sheet available when you’d like some help deciding which program to use for a particular task. Buzzword, Tables, Acrobat desktop software, and the new CS Review service all have capabilities that you can use to your greatest advantage; the trick is knowing when to use which. We hope that this chart and the ensuing tips will make these programs–and their unique or shared capabilities–more accessible to you as you work.
It’s been 2 years since the Virtual Ubiquity team joined Adobe and Acrobat.com. And we’re marking the anniversary with our most ambitious release to date. Adobe veterans and the former Virtual Ubiquity team have brought their technologies together to merge our online services into a much more cohesive whole. And we think you’ll be pleased with the result. We’re bringing it all together.
In a conversation with one of the Adobe staff in the UK, an inspiring although not surprising story was told. He works frequently with a number of departments in the UK Government, and knows quite well that it is typically a long process when updating any sort of policy or procedure, even for minor updates. And so, here’s the story… and perhaps a good example for others who may find themselves in the same position.
As a student at City College in San Francisco over the summer, I used Buzzword to complete my class essays. I have to confess that it’s a given that I would, since I’m also Community Manager for Acrobat.com. As many of us students will be returning to class in the coming weeks, I want to encourage you all to give Buzzword a try. What I found is that Buzzword so easy to use and elegant, it quite literally makes working on assignments more fun.
For instance, when approaching a topic, I have a jumbled buzz of ideas in my head that I want to capture, and translating the thoughts into a coherent report is easier with Buzzword. Buzzword’s comment feature allows me to jump to the side of the current sentence to add a note to myself – a nice place holder to remind me to look up a fact or research an example – without interrupting the flow of the writing. Here’s a screenshot of what I mean:
After reading the rough draft, the comment feature also comes in handy for additional thoughts such as what I need to add, where it’s best to add it, what I should consider deleting, and what I need to think about some more before committing it in my report. It’s a much quicker – and also more tree friendly – process vs. printing out a copy and then hand writing comments.
