Lori DeFurio

WooHoo! Adobe Reader 9 is here!

Adobe Reader 9 is now freely available from Adobe.com. It is currently available in English, French, German, and Japanese for Windows (2000 SP4 and higher) or Mac OS X (10.4.11 and higher).

Get a copy, and then download these examples of documents created with Acrobat 9:

this PDF Portfolio, which contains some of the Acrobat 9 marketing materials and a Flash movie.
this Flash application which includes a flash controller, flash playbar, flash movie and captions which can be useful for accessibility requirements, or subtitles for localization.

and, let me know if you have some samples created with Acrobat 9 that I can showcase here.

PDF Widget on Acrobat.com

Many times I’ve seen a link to a PDF document and thought that maybe it contained the information I needed but I didn’t want to wait for the download, or worse yet… I wait for the download and then the file isn’t what I really wanted.

One of the cool new features of Acrobat.com (Adobe’s new free hosted services — currently in public beta) allows you to embed a widget directly in your HTML page (like I’ve done below) - to allow you to view the PDF content — inline — in the HTML page before deciding if you want to download it. For example, this file is now 10 MB after I attached the exercise files to the PDF document for convenience.

(Please note: you’ll need Adobe Flash Player installed to view this content)

shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,115,0" width="365" height="500">

P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="365" height="500" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="ext=pdf&docId=1826d5f7-ab86-4350-9590-d55c7a18f1c5">

How do you do this yourself?

Login to Acrobat.com. If you don’t have an account yet, don’t worry. It’s free - and you just click Sign Up to get started.
Upload the file you want to make available in your HTML page.
Select Copy Embed Code from the details pod (Figure 1) or if you are looking at all of your files (figure 2)
just click on the arrow to the right of the file name and select Copy Embed Code from the dropdown.

Figure 1. Document is open

Figure 2. Viewing all documents
Place the copied link into your html page, similar to this example:

Demonstration of using <span class="caps">PDF</span> Widget in a Web Page

The following is a preview of PDF content hosted on Acrobat.com

shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,115,0” width=”365” height=”500”>

Really cool, right?

And my HTML page looks like this

Figure 3. HTML Example displayed in Safari browser.

Now I can flip through the file, and determine if it is indeed the information I wanted, and then select Download or Share from the menu, and I’m directed to Acrobat.com.

Notice here in Figure 4 that I’m prompted to download (vs. preview) due to the fact that here is additional functionality in this PDF supported on in Acrobat and Reader — that is basically the fact that I’ve attached the exercise files to the PDF document as an attachment.

Figure 4. Message appears when viewing in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader delivers the best experience.

Enjoy!

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:

Select More details... from the APIP dialog box (Figure 1) or,
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...

If you want to try it out now... please visit http://www.adobe.com/tryacrobat
If you want to buy it now, feel free to stop by the Adobe Online Store,or call your reseller.
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...

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

PDF iFilter 8 - 64-bit Support - LIVE on Labs!

Acrobat team has just posted on Adobe Labs an update to PDF iFilter 8 which enables 64-bit system support, specifically Windows 2003 with SharePoint 2007.
Take a look - and if you have feedback or questions - there is a new forum available as well

ANNOUNCEMENT: Update for Acrobat/Reader (8.1.1) available today

The latest update for Acrobat and Adobe Reader is available now. This release addresses a security vulnerability on Windows recently identified in addition to some other issues (i.e. bugs) identified on both Macintosh and Windows versions.
Downloads:
Adobe Reader 8.1.1 (Windows)
Adobe Reader 8.1.1 (Macintosh)
Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1.1 (Macintosh)
Adobe Acrobat Professional & Standard 8.1.1 (Windows)
Adobe Acrobat 3D 8.1.1 (Windows)

Just In...

5:00 pm Tuesday, Oct 23: The auto updater is now working for both Acrobat and Reader.

Next up ... Adobe MAX

Adobe is hosting three Adobe MAX 2007 conferences this year:
North America: Chicago which starts on Sunday
Europe: Barcelona starting October 15 and
Japan: Tokyo on November 1 and 2.

I'm excited to return to MAX this year, attending in both North America and Europe, hosting a hands-on session called "I didn't know you could do that!" and hanging out at the Acrobat User Community stand. At our kick-off event in Chicago, there are multiple sessions dedicated to Acrobat and/or PDF – Jim King is going to cover standards; Thom Parker has a great talk entitled Pimp my PDF, where he will cover how to jazz up your audience's PDF experience. This session is not to be missed! And as Johnny L mentions in his blog, the sneak peek session is always a highlight.

If you're attending, please feel free to track me down.

Supported PDF functionality - Mac OS 10.4

I'm always being asked -- how does the implementation of PDF on my Mac compare to what Adobe offers in Acrobat and Adobe Reader. So, I went to PDF guru, Leonard Rosenthol , and he prepared a chart, which I then jazzed up using InDesign to create layers and added interactive buttons in Acrobat to allow you to select different views of the document to see what Apple can Read/Write, Read Only, or have Partially Implemented on the Mac platform (OS 10.4/Tiger). And I've outlined what is not supported at all

.
Figure 1. Default view Figure 2. All white items are unsupported

As background information - the PDF Specification - version 1.x through 1.7 - has been published by Adobe and made freely available on our website. Vendors choose to implement features/functionality as it makes sense for their use.

And of course... if there is an error in this chart, please let me know.

AcrobatUsers.com members exceeds 15K

As of July 1st, AcrobatUsers.com now has over 15,000 members registered. Most of these members also belong to an Acrobat Chapter in one of 20 cities around the world. Our NYC chapter is #1 in total registered members, and will be holding their July meeting on Tuesday. The guest speaker is Mike Richmond from Adobe. If you want to attend via the web - drop by http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/nyc02 at 12:30 pm ET on Tuesday, July 10th. The Dallas chapter is creeping up on NYC with a 30% overall increase in members during June to a total of almost 800 members. I'm going to make a trip to Dallas in the fall to visit this very active group.

Congratulations to Orlando - our newest chapter, and the chapter with the greatest growth in June. I spoke at their inaugural meeting on June 19th. When I arrived in Orlando (late afternoon) it was 97 degrees and humid! The evening was a blast! We had an excellent turnout and great pizza from a local vendor.
As we move into the summer, there will be less face-to-face meetings however, be sure to check back at the website to see who's hosting online meetings via Acrobat Connect.

Font Packs to use with Acrobat or Reader 8

If you're having trouble finding the Asian Font Packs and/or the European Extended Font Pack for Acrobat/Reader 8 on Adobe.com - not to worry. They're on our FTP site now as MSI files, and will be posted on Adobe.com later this summer as full installers (similar to Acrobat 7).
The Eastern European Font Pack includes Thai, Hebrew, and Arabic.
The Asian fonts - Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Japanese, and Korean are each in their own MSI file.

Please note: with these MSI files - you must copy the MSI installer to an empty directory and then run the installer from that directory. We've seen problems if there are other files in the directory. This is only an issue with the MSI files - this will not be a problem when we get the files posted on Adobe.com as full installers.