Lori DeFurio

June 25, 2008

Adobe Product Improvement Program - What is it?

Now that Acrobat 9 is available, once you install any of the windows versions of the product, you will notice a new option called the Adobe Product Improvement Program (APIP). Oh, and when Adobe Reader 9 is available, it will also have this functionality.

APIP is an opportunity for you to help us improve Acrobat, in a similar fashion to the product improvement programs run by others in our industry — like those from Microsoft, Google and Intuit.

You might wonder why Adobe has decided to go down this path. Well... we're just opening up a new channel for customers to provide us feedback. Today, we have multiple venues to gather feedback from our customers — user groups, focus groups, participation in pre-release programs, and so on. This is another way for you to provide feedback to help us improve Acrobat and our goal is that the information collected will help us create a better Acrobat/Adobe Reader in the future.

So what happens when you participate?

#1 information about how you're using the product, for example, how you use certain features and functions within the application are sent to Adobe, but no personal information is collected — it is 100% anonymous.

#2 participating will not affect user experience or performance of Acrobat (or Adobe Reader) and will be virtually invisible to you. Basically, when you quit Acrobat or Adobe Reader the collected information is sent to Adobe (no 3rd party is involved)

Please be aware - and this is important - this is an "opt-in" program — what does that mean? It means, by default the opportunity to participate is turned off. You have to consciously make the choice to elect to participate. You will be prompted one time only — typically on the 5th launch of the product.

You'll see a screen similar to this (Figure 1) and as seen in the screenshot - the default is "No, thank you".

Figure 1. Adobe Product Improvement Program dialog box in Acrobat/Reader 9

You need to select “Yes, I would like to help make Acrobat even better” to participate. If you decide to go with the default of "No, thank you" now, and you change your mind later, it's easy to participate — just select Help > Improvement Program Options (Figure 2) and you'll see the Adobe Product Improvement Program dialog box (Figure 1) again. This time, just select "Yes, I would like to help make Acrobat even better", and you're in!

Figure 2. To recall the APIP dialog box or to learn more, select Help > Improvement Program Options

I'm sure you're wondering, what's next? Will Adobe use this in other products? Sure. Again, this is another great way for customers to provide us feedback and for us to incorporate that feedback into products moving forward. Stay tuned. The feedback from our Acrobat and Adobe Reader users will help us determine the "what's next" and "when".

If you need or want more information on this program, you have two options:

1. Select More details... from the APIP dialog box (Figure 1) or,
2. Visit the APIP site where you'll find the FAQ and any additional information as it becomes relevant.

I encourage you to take a look - and participate if you want to be a part of Acrobat's future development.

Acrobat 9 is now available!

I feel like we've all just had a baby... I guess we did and we called it Acrobat 9.

So... just the facts, ma'am...

1. If you want to try it out now... please visit http://www.adobe.com/tryacrobat
2. If you want to buy it now, feel free to stop by the Adobe Online Store,or call your reseller.
3. If you want to learn more you have a few options:
   • You want to hear a live presentation so you can ask questions -- please join me on Thursday, June 26th for an eSeminar on how to use Acrobat 9.
   • You want to listen to a recorded presentation — I created one on 6 Cool Things you can do with Acrobat 9
   • You want to investigate on your own - visit http://www.adobe.com/acrobat or http://www.acrobatusers.com

OK - you have either purchased Acrobat 9 or you have downloaded the trial and you want to learn more about using Acrobat -- we have some great new how-to videos posted in the Adobe Video Workshop

Enjoy! Acrobat 9 is going to amaze you, really...

June 23, 2008

Reminder -- Acrobat 9 eSeminar

I will be presenting Redefine the Way You Communicate, a one-hour eSeminar on Thursday, June 26th at 9:00 am Pacific and will repeat the content again at 12:00 noon Pacific. If you're not based in the Pacific time zone, you can visit http://www.timeanddate.com/ to do a time zone conversion.

The topic will be Acrobat 9 — how can Acrobat and PDF help you be more productive in your day-to-day tasks. I will cover quite a range of topics including Acrobat's built-in workflows for collecting feedback — either feedback in a fillable PDF form, or feedback on documents as part of a review.

As you may have heard, or read earlier, we've added Adobe Flash to Acrobat and Adobe Reader 9, so I will review how you can use Adobe Flash to punch up presentations, create PDF Portfolios to deliver your information, and embed multimedia in your documents to help your reader understand exactly what you're trying to convey.

And, as a final treat... I will go over improvements for creating PDF documents — from web pages, from your clipboard, or by scanning paper to PDF.

Hope you can make it!

Click here to register/attend.

June 19, 2008

Demonstration: Distributing Fillable Forms on Macintosh

Here's another short video tutorial -- this one show how to distribute and collect data from your fillable PDF form -- on a Macintosh.

June 12, 2008

Acrobat 8 Tips

Today I presented along with Geoff Blake to the Acrobat User Community. Many of the folks asked me for my presentation so I'm posting it here, and it will also be posted in Lori's Corner. Enjoy!

June 6, 2008

Demonstration: Creating Fillable Forms from Adobe InDesign

After I published my first entry on Acrobat 9 last week, I received some feedback on the demonstration that showed how to create fillable forms using Acrobat 9. I used my Windows computer, starting with a Microsoft Word document to create that demonstration. I now have a second demonstration, created for me by Ali Hanyaloglu, that shows a similar workflow, except, he started with an Adobe InDesign document and used his Macintosh computer. Enjoy!

June 2, 2008

Acrobat 9: A revolutionary release

Yes, I've been "dark" for a few weeks. I've been preparing for today! I truly believe that this release of Acrobat (and Adobe Reader) will be a "game changing" event -- just like desktop publishing in the 1980's and web publishing in the 1990's.

The marriage of Flash and PDF (just like the marriage of Macromedia and Adobe) creates a union stronger than the separate parts. That’s right – the Adobe Flash runtime (based on version 9) is baked right into Acrobat and Reader. That means that any Flash content you’ve added to a PDF document on your computer – either Flash Video (FLV) or a Flash animation or application (SWF) – will just work on anyone else’s computer – as long as they’re using Acrobat or Adobe Reader 9.

The Acrobat Family.

We have three products in the family now -- Acrobat 9 Standard, Acrobat 9 Pro, and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended. Each product fulfills a certain market segment – for example, Acrobat 9 Standard is great for creating and distributing PDF documents and forms! That’s right – Acrobat 9 Standard has the ability to create fillable PDF forms, distribute these forms, and collect the information in a simple and streamlined fashion. I’ve included a quick demonstration of this process.

Acrobat 9 Pro (formerly Acrobat Professional) continues to be our workhorse product for people who need to work with PDF documents – either to work more closely with others, like using the commenting tools and workflows to collect feedback, to ensuring your documents are sanitized, to working with PDF documents for print production. If you want to learn more about improvements and updates to collaboration, take a look at The Same Page – a blog focused on Acrobat and Collaboration.

And the newest addition – Acrobat 9 Pro Extended – is the ultimate toolset for working with PDF documents. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended has all the capabilities of Acrobat 3D version 8, but also so much more… There’s a Video-to-Flash transcoder which allows drag-and-drop of any type of multimedia format onto Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, and it’s converted to Flash video automatically. And, Adobe Presenter – a powerful add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint, is included! This technology is so cool. It allows you to add audio, video, and SWF in a PowerPoint presentation and then save it to PDF for viewing offline. If you want a deeper look at the differences between the products check out the feature matrix.

Oh.. and one more thing... Acrobat 9 is now available in 28 languages! To see the full list you can refer to the Language Support page.

I expect to share more with you this week, and please feel free to send me comments so that I can help you understand the Acrobat 9 family.

If you want more information...

Take a look at the blogs and articles on AcrobatUsers.com. These contributors have been in the Acrobat pre-release program and can share their first-hand experience with the product family.

Also.. feel free to sign up to be notified when the free Acrobat 9 trial download will be available.