Posts in Category "Developer News"

July 1, 2008

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)

How do you do this yourself?

  1. 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.
  2. Upload the file you want to make available in your HTML page.
  3. 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
  4. Place the copied link into your html page, similar to this example:

<html><title>Demonstration of using PDF Widget in a Web Page</title>
<body><p>The following is a preview of PDF content hosted on Acrobat.com</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/
shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,115,0" width="365" height="500"> <param name="movie" value="https://share.acrobat.com/adc/flex/mpt.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"/> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/> <param name="flashvars" value="ext=pdf&docId=1826d5f7-ab86-4350-9590-d55c7a18f1c5"/> <embed src="https://share.acrobat.com/adc/flex/mpt.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?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"> </embed> </object></p>
<p>Really cool, right?</p>
</body></html>

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!

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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.


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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.

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September 25, 2007

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.

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September 20, 2007

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

applePDF02.jpg
apple-unsupported.jpg.
      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.

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June 13, 2007

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.

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June 5, 2007

ANNOUNCEMENT: Acrobat 8.1 available today

As of today, an update to Acrobat 8, upgrading Acrobat 8 to Acrobat 8.1 (Professional & Standard) is available via Adobe Updater (in Acrobat). A download on Adobe.com will be available later this month (I’ll update you when it is live)

The 8.1 release works with Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Vista. Both PDF as a file format and Acrobat as an application are now “first class” citizens in these environments.

In Office 2007 – we are conforming to the new ribbon UI and are fully integrated. (Figure 1)

a81_image1.jpg

Figure 1. Acrobat Ribbon in Microsoft Word 2007

In MSFT Vista – PDF will preview similar to other supported file formats, and of course, you can create PDF by simply right clicking on supported file formats (Word, Excel, PPT, JPG, etc.) (Figure 2)

a81_image2.jpg

Figure 2. Right-click on any supported application in Microsoft Vista to create Adobe PDF.

My favorite integration with Office 2007 is with Outlook 2007. Now, when you open an email message in preview mode that has a PDF attachment – you see the PDF in the preview pane. You can view full page, or page width, and even navigate multi-page files. (Figure 3)

a81_image3.jpg

Figure 3. PDF Preview in Outlook 2007.

Also – at the request of our customer base, we’re supporting 64-bit Citrix and Windows environments. Acrobat is still a 32-bit application, but for folks running 64-bit Citrix environments, or who load Acrobat on a 64-bit Windows system, Acrobat will work as advertised.

For additional information, I recommend you review http://www.adobe.com/acrobat and http://www.acrobatusers.com/ for articles and tips from our contributors on the updates in Acrobat 8.1.

Adobe Reader 8.1 is also available today.

Continue reading…

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April 14, 2007

Announcement: Activities at AIIM/OnDemand

This week is the annual AIIM/OnDemand conference. The conference will be at the new Boston Convention Center, and Adobe has quite a few activities planned. Three events that don’t require a conference pass include:

  • Acrobat Developer Workshop on Wednesday afternoon, hosted by Joel Geraci, Technical Evangelist, Acrobat/PDF
  • Adobe User Group meeting on Thursday morning, hosted by Ali Hanyaloglu and I
  • Creative Suite 3 Deep Dive, either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, presented by Tim Plumer.

Each events will be held in room 104C at the Boston Convention Center. If you’re in town for the conference, or if you’re based in the Boston area, please feel free to join us for one or more of these events. Registration is available here.

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March 28, 2007

Acrobat 3D Version 8 live on Adobe Labs

There’s a first time for everything… I’m happy to see our first Acrobat family product on Adobe Labs! Acrobat 3D Version 8 is the next generation version incorporating the excellent technology acquired from TTF in early 2006. Take it for a drive!

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March 12, 2007

Adobe Acrobat for IT Professionals eSeminar Series

Joel Geraci, our Acrobat/PDF Technical Evangelist, is hosting 5 eSeminars to address topics of interest to IT professionals and Acrobat/PDF developers: Security, Collaboration Best Practices, JavaScript & Forms, and the Acrobat SDK. These seminars will run from March 21 – June 13 on Wednesdays at 9:00 am Pacific.
More information and registration information is available here.

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