Mike Potter

October 04, 2005

My thoughts on PDF in Office 12

So, Microsoft has decided to include the ability to save directly to PDF in Office 12. Of course when you create an open specification, as Adobe has done with PDF, the odds that creation of that document will become commoditized increase. This is big news for a lot of people, but for some of us, the question to Microsoft is really what took you so long? Anyone can download the freely available specification and build their own PDF creation tool. Wordperfect has it built in, OS X has had it built in since v. 10.0, and a quick search on Sourceforge.net brings up 45 projects for creating a variety PDF documents.

Some people are already saying that this is the end of Acrobat, as PDF creation becomes part of the core office suite. I don’t think so.

In my opinion, people are buying Acrobat for more than just the PDF creation. If you’re a power user, when was the last time you actually just PDFd a document and saved it to your computer. Maybe for a receipt from an online purchase, or some other confirmation, but I think that’s about it. That’s the equivalent of printing out a document just to have a paper record. And if you think about it, there are only a few real advantages to having a PDF document on your own computer compared to having the original file. If you’ve got the program to make the file, you’ve got the program to open the file. Side note: the main exception I’ve found with this is when dealing with HTML pages. I find it much easier to PDF an HTML page, rather than to save the .html file and then a sub-directory of all the images on the page. I prefer to have just one file to send to people.

People really want to share their documents with other people, however I think that most people also want to allow people to view and participate in their workflows. To me, that’s where Acrobat’s real value is. The ability to spin off a review and commenting workflow from directly in Word or Firefox is really the main use that I have for Acrobat these days. People then use Reader or Acrobat to comment in the document, and send it back to me. (Acrobat 7 allows people with the free reader client to participate in your review and commenting workflows). When the document comes back into my inbox, Acrobat merges the comments right back in to the Word document, I accept or reject all the comments, and my workflow is complete.

And if you agree with me that review and commenting is really the main use of Acrobat, then I can’t see how having save to PDF in Office is going to do anything but help Adobe. The first thing people are going to realize is that they can send out this file and everyone is going to be able to open it. That’s the first step, which some of us have known for a long time, but for others (over 30,000 searches for this per week according to Microsoft), this will solve a major problem for them. However, after they’ve found that out, the second step is that people are going to want their coworkers to comment and review on the document. Its just natural. You’ve got a document you want to share with others, and now you can guarantee they can open it. The next thing you’ll want to do is allow people to comment on the document. It’s the logical next step is sharing your documents, and for Office 12 at least, something that people can only do with a copy of Acrobat on their desktop.

September 14, 2005

Legal Terms and Beta Software

In a follow up to John Nack's post about Google speaking plainly, I came across some surprising text on Microsoft.com today, when downloading their new Microsoft Codename Max program.

"Because this is beta software*, you might be wondering if it will destroy your computer, erase your data, or cause unnecessary stress. It won't, and here's why:"

"Can you just tell me the system requirements so I can decide for myself? Sure. Here they are:"

It sure is a refreshing change from the traditional two page EULA agreements that people need to read before downloading software (the EULA is still in the install). However, it does seem strange to come from a company that is hitting a mid-life crisis.

Having said that, I do think its better than the 2 1/2 screen legal agreement we have for people downloading Adobe LiveCycle samples.

I did really like the "We are not robots" and photo of the team on the page though. I think that Adobe would start doing more of that: showing off the people who are involved in the programs / software. It gives it more of a personal feeling, and you realize that in fact there are actual people helping develop software and programs, not just developers in front of computer screens all day.

As for the software, I found it pretty unimpressive. I don't know a lot of people in the Microsoft world, and others need to run Windows and Max in order to view your shared pictures. I'll sharing my photos over the web, where others only need a browser to view them.

There's probably a whole other post to be made about the expansion of distributing beta software, but I'll save that for another day.

August 23, 2005

Yahoo Desktop Search

I've been using desktop searching programs for a while now, and like many others have found them to be indispensible. Today, I installed Yahoo! Desktop Search, and was really impressed by it. I love the fact that when you search for emails, it shows you all the reply and forward controls, but even better was when I searched for a PDF document, and could see the document below the search. Nice! Now if only we could get the same functionality in Thunderbird or Outlook.