Adobe Document Services » 2010 » September

Laying Our Cards Out On The Tables

Courtney Brigham — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 18:25:06 +0000

We’re sure you’ve used Tables in Acrobat.com 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?

Check out the recent blog post from Rebecca Staley, Acrobat.com Community Manager, who has prepared a handy overview of viewing mechanisms in Tables. In the post, she highlights how 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!

Follow Acrobat.com on Twitter.

Rebecca Staley, Acrobat.com Community Manager

Share Your Acrobat Story

Courtney Brigham — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:00:02 +0000

We’ve posted a number of tips and tricks and tutorials about important capabilities in Acrobat, but that’s only half the story. Throughout the years, we’ve been fortunate enough to hear about the great ways our customers (and even our colleagues) are using Acrobat for everything from reviewing advertising projects to preparing taxes.

Fittingly, The Acrobat User Community features a series of interviews with our Acrobat expert team called “Why I Love Acrobat.” Customers from law enforcement to advertising share how Acrobat has changed their professional and personal lives. Check out the first eight interviews here.

How about you? We’re looking forward to hearing how Acrobat has helped you better navigate through work and life. It’s easy to submit your story: You can write it (700 words or less) or tell us in a video (no more than 256MB). Just use the submission form on Acrobat Users.com. Be sure to check out the user feedback area, then tell us why YOU love Acrobat!

Lori DeFurio, Group Product Marketing Manager, Acrobat Solutions

New MAX Session Added on Sandboxing & Adobe Reader Security

Courtney Brigham — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:59:11 +0000

For anyone interested in Adobe Reader security, this is the newly added MAX session,”Sandboxing Adobe Reader Protected Mode” is for you.

Join Suchit Mishra, Acrobat lead security researcher, and Steve Gottwals, Acrobat group product manager, as they help separate fact from fiction in the buzz around Adobe Reader security. We’ll outline the motivation behind Protected Mode and give a demonstration of Adobe Reader running in the sandbox. We’ll discuss how Reader Protected Mode works and how it can protect end users from Internet attacks via malicious PDF files.

To learn more or register for this limited seat MAX session, check out the details here.

Joel Geraci, Acrobat Technical Evangelist

Acrobat in a “Flash”!

Adobe Acrobat — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:14:28 +0000

Earlier posts here have covered cool capabilities in Acrobat 9 such as PDF Portfolios and redaction, so I’d like to spend some time talking about one of the other great features introduced in Acrobat 9—native support for Flash, our multimedia platform used to build animation, video and interactivity with the Web. We’re also gearing up for a great preconference lab at Adobe MAX on Sunday, Oct. 24, which will take a look at using Flash to create PDF Portfolio layouts, so this is a great opportunity to fill you in on the basics!

So what’s Flash in Acrobat all about? Instead of calling out to an external player in your browser or desktop, you can add Flash content (.swf files) in a PDF, play it via the built-in Flash Player for Acrobat and share it with anyone who has Adobe Reader 9. Also, it doesn’t matter what video format you’re working with; Acrobat 9 Pro Extended can convert a variety of video formats to Flash Video so there’s no need for a separate player.

A number of savvy Acrobat users have taken these capabilities a step further and created mini-applications or “Flash Widgets”, to deliver content such as interactive maps and games that play within a PDF document; I think of them as portable applications. Lori DeFurio offers up a great overview of Flash Widgets inside PDF documents on Adobe TV.

Recently, I wrote about a YouTube widget I created for Acrobat that allows you to stream video from YouTube directly into PDFs. Be sure to check out this article for directions on how to download the YouTube widget and how to add YouTube videos to a PDF.

How have you been using Flash in Acrobat? We’d love to hear about your projects and success stories! Again, for you Flash enthusiasts, developers and newbies alike, we hope to see you at the Acrobat/Flash Builder 4 preconference lab at MAX. More info here!

Joel Geraci, Acrobat Technical Evangelist

Redaction Gone Wrong!

Adobe Acrobat — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:00:44 +0000

Redaction. The very word makes knowledge workers shudder, especially if they were at the wrong end of redaction done incorrectly (meaning, they thought they had purged information from a digital document, but they in fact had only covered it). Some high profile examples of redaction gone wrong – documents filed during the federal trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, HSBC Bank exposing sensitive bankruptcy data, the TSA leaking data about security screening at airports – all drive the point home.

This excellent article on redaction in The Legal Intelligencer walks through the importance of getting redaction right. Author Kim Walker says it best:

Back in the day, redacting was a breeze. You had a black magic marker, you drew over what you didn’t want your adversary to see and the worst that could happen was you dropped a black magic marker on your tan pants and ruined them. A small price to pay. And unless your adversary hired Superman, they couldn’t see through the black magic marker…

Kim writes for a legal audience but redaction is powerful tool used in the government and healthcare industries as well. And while digital redaction saves time and gets the job done, there are a lot of common errors that are very easy to make when redacting information from a document.

Let’s review a few:

Common Redaction Errors in Adobe Acrobat			Common Redaction Errors in Microsoft Word
Covering Up Information	Forgetting to Apply Redactions	Covering up Information in Word and Printing to PDF		Changing Text to White or Background Colors
In Acrobat, drawing a black box over the text or images you want redacted and thinking this will do the trick. Nope. Those black boxes can be removed by anyone with a simple cut and paste.	In Acrobat, properly marking text to be redacted using the redaction tool but not applying it. Skipping the ‘apply’ step means you did not redact anything.	In Word, highlighting the text and choosing black as the highlight color. It appears as a black box over the text and the text appears to be redacted. But if you were to highlight that area again and change the highlight color to no color the text appears again.		In Word, selecting the text and changing the font color to white. It appears as if the words have disappeared and you can’t see them on the page. But if you were to select the text and choose any color the text would be visible.

Now that we see how not to redact, here are some best practices and tips for correctly redacting information:

Adobe Acrobat (version 8 and 9):

1. Choose View>Toolbars> Redaction

2. Select the Mark for Redaction tool

3. Mark items you want to remove using one of the following methods:

Double-click to select a word or image;
CTRL as you drag to select a line, a block of text, an object, or an area

4. Click Apply Redactions in the Redaction toolbar

5. Click OK to remove the items. Very important: The items are not permanently removed from the document until you save it!

6. Save the document with a different name, i.e., REDACTED_MEMO.PDF

Acrobat also provides an Examine Document feature that finds hidden information such as metadata, hidden text or comments, and can also flag items that the user covered up using one of the ineffective methods talked about earlier, mistakenly believing the info has been redacted. The Examine Document function can detect and fix these issues.

For more comprehensive how-to’s, step by step videos and other information on redaction best practices, check out my Semi-definitive Guide to Redaction in Acrobat.

… or for regularly updated resources for Acrobat in the legal community, check out: http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/

… or Twitter: @acrolaw

Cheers,

Rick Borstein, Business Development Manager, Acrobat

Beware Phishy Emails

Courtney Brigham — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:15:21 +0000

It has come to Adobe’s attention that email messages purporting to offer a download of a new version of Adobe Reader have been sent by entities claiming to be Adobe. Many of these emails are signed as “Adobe Acrobat Reader Support” (or similar), and in some instances require recipients to register and/or provide personal information. Please be aware that these emails have not been sent by Adobe or on Adobe’s behalf.

The Adobe Reader is free software available for download directly from the Adobe Reader download page on the Adobe Web site at http://get.adobe.com/reader/; it is not available in any other manner via download, including via email. Customers receiving one of these emails should delete the email immediately without clicking on any of the links.

Making a Great First Impression

Courtney Brigham — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:00:05 +0000

Have you taken a look at the Acrobat User Community Job Board lately? There are lots of interesting opportunities for job seekers and those looking for help with their projects – from paid internships to consulting to full-time designer and system analyst positions. If you are looking for new and interesting work where you can use your Acrobat skills, there’s a great resource to find the right job for you.

We all know that we only have one chance to make a good first impression, but how can you present yourself in the most flattering light? One approach is to build and deliver your resume as a PDF Portfolio that stands out from everyone else’s standard-looking resumes.

With PDF Portfolios, you can create a powerful and engaging way to show off your experience and skills. You can package a wide range of content – multiple documents, including your resume, examples of your previous work, even in multimedia formats, for example – into a single easily read file. All your future employer needs is the free Adobe Reader 9.

Competition for jobs today is intense. So why not be creative and give yourself the best shot you can at that next great job? If you want to learn how to build a PDF Portfolio, there’s a great tutorial here on AcrobatUsers.com.

Good luck!

Ali Hanyaloglu, Product Evangelist, Acrobat Solutions

MAX 2010 Preconference for Flash Builder Developers

Adobe Acrobat — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:51:42 +0000

For the first time, Adobe Acrobat has a preconference lab at MAX and it’s going to be a great one. Why? Because now Acrobat is even more fully embracing the Flash Platform, Flash Designers and Flash Builder Developers. The preconference lab takes place Sunday, October 24th 2010 – look for the preconference session below then keep reading for a description of what we’ll cover.

Using Flash Builder 4 to Create Custom PDF Portfolio Layouts

Leverage your ActionScript or Flash design skills to build custom PDF Portfolio layouts. This hands-on lab will introduce you to a new set of tools for developing PDF Portfolio layouts in Flash Builder 4. The PDF Portfolio Layout SDK and Flash Builder plug-in support the process of creating, debugging, and packaging these layouts. Clients will be amazed by the rich user experience you can create for assembling content and communications as part of your brand or design services.

Hopefully you already know what a PDF Portfolio is but if not, you can watch this video on Adobe TV to get a good overview of this cool new capability in Acrobat 9.

Background:
Acrobat 9 comes with a default set of PDF Portfolio Layouts. These are great for bundling up a set of files and sending them around as a single PDF file. There are some basic features that allow you to customize headers and a welcome screen as well as the ability to apply different color palettes. But, with Acrobat 9.1, we introduced a rich ActionScript API that can be used to create interactive, highly branded custom PDF Portfolio layouts or “Navigators”, as they are referred to in the API.

That was phase one.

Phase Two:
At MAX 2010, well be introducing a beta version of a new set of tools that plug into Flash Builder 4 to support the process of creating, debugging, and packaging PDF Portfolio Layouts that have even more capabilities than previously available. Users will be able to experience your new enhanced PDF Portfolio Layouts in a future release of Adobe Reader 9 that will be available when these tools are released.

The New Project Wizard:
The New Project Wizard is an extension that automates the process of creating a basic navigator project.

After running the wizard, you’ll have a basic navigator with all the code and resources you need to compile, package and deploy for use in Acrobat, it’s basically identical to one of the Layouts that we ship with Acrobat, so you know it’s been tested and is ready to go.

The Debug Launcher:
The Debug Launcher is a Flash Builder launch configuration type that has been customized to support the running and debugging of navigator projects in a Previewer application.

The Previewer Application:
The Previewer Application is a simulation of the Acrobat and Reader PDF Portfolio runtime. It allows you to test your Layout in various flavors of Acrobat and in Reader with a virtual PDF that has different permission bits. It even lets you test your custom properties, metadata and localization strings, all without loading your Layout into Acrobat itself.

The Export Wizard:
The Export Wizard packages all of the needed navigator resources into a single .nav file.

Pushing the Envelope:
Finally, all of the custom components that we use in the Layouts that ship with Acrobat are available for you to either use as-is or extend. This opens up opportunities to customize a PDF Portfolio Layout if you are a Flash Builder expert or just getting started. The image below is a customized PDF Portfolio Layout running in the Preview Application.

What’s in it for Flash Designers?
Because these tools are built on Flash Builder 4 and use the new skinning model, Flash Professional Designers can use their existing skills to create “Visual Themes” or skins for all of the skinnable components in the Acrobat Portfolio SDK. If you know how to skin a video player, you can skin these components – it’s that easy.

Please join us and learn about these great new tools. See the Preconference page at the MAX web site.

Joel Geraci, Acrobat Technical Evangelist

PDF Portfolios: Check Out Some Great Examples or Submit Your Own

Courtney Brigham — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:00:43 +0000

Acrobat 9 PDF Portfolios are an easy, engaging way to share your work with others. Using PDF Portfolios, you can quickly combine a wide range of content, give it a customized, unified look, and share it broadly and securely. There are some great examples of PDF Portfolios on the Adobe PDF Showcase page.

One of my favorites is the portfolio that goes over the features of Acrobat 9 itself. It begins with a video baked right into the portfolio, and moves to an overview of Acrobat 9 where the viewer is given a snapshot of each of the product’s highlights, again via video. Pretty cool – more like a movie than a collection of PDF files!

Many of our active users have already embraced the power of PDF Portfolios. In fact, there is a new collaboration exchange showcase on AcrobatUsers.com. The PDF Portfolio Exchange showcases real-world examples of PDF Portfolio templates and layouts that you can download and start using immediately. You just download a template and add your own files or download a PDF Portfolio Layout (which is a .NAV file), install it and create a new PDF Portfolio from scratch.

If you have created a PDF Portfolio template or layout you’d be willing to share with the community, you can do that too, here.

PDF is everywhere, with about 150 million on the web today and countless PDF files in use internally by governments and businesses around the world. Acrobat 9 PDF Portfolios help combine and integrate these files in a way that makes it easy to consume, providing a whole new way to share information and make your message truly stand out.

Lori DeFurio, Group Product Marketing Manager, Acrobat Solutions