Donna Baker: Baker Communications
Donna is a freelance graphic designer, and author of a couple dozen books about design software, and Web design. About half of the books she's written are on Adobe Acrobat. Donna has also written a monthly article for Acrobatusers.com since the early days of the site. In the last year or so, she's started to narrow her focus to all things Acrobat. She's an Adobe Community Expert, an Adobe Certified Expert, and in her spare time she's one of the online Adobe Acrobat Help system moderators.

You should also check out the Acrofacts blog, where where she posts Acrobat-related topics as they strike her fancy, and downloadable PDF file versions of her acrobatusers.com articles. You can also follow Donna for a daily Acrobat tip on Twitter or Facebook.

Donna sent me her WeeMee instead of a photo so I know she manages to find time for some fun and games too. Outside of Acrobat and work, she lives in the marshlands of a Canadian lake with her family and two little hound dogs. Donna is also an avid designer of everything, and sculpts in concrete, metal and glass.

About MAX this year, Donna says:

2009 marks my second excursion into the world of MAX. Last year (2008) I was a member of the esteemed “Battle of the Acrobat All-Stars” panel. I spoke about the ability to combine content from a variety of sources and apply features in Acrobat to create a cohesive document appearance. I was sure the pics of cute dogs would cinch a win for me. Alas – I was wrong.

I’m on my own at MAX 2009. My session looks at some of the coolest and best hidden features you’ll find in Acrobat. We’re looking at some advanced features that automate tasks, help you get your work done faster, and get it done right. The idea of using Advanced commands scares some people, and using Preflight ramps up the fight-or-flight reaction in most non-print people. “Pshaw,”sez I.

I love Acrobat (ok, my hubby too, but I do love Acrobat). Software is just software, until you take charge and make it perform for you. They don’t call the program “Acrobat” for nothing. The key to making Acrobat jump through hoops for you is getting a handle on Preflight.

Forget about print profiles and standards, if you like. Did you know you could track down dozens of items like hairlines or text using nonembedded fonts? Or how about separating images, text, and vector objects into separate layers? Once your search is complete, use a provided fix to correct your file, or create your own custom fixes.

Depending on your workflow and how you like to work, store your custom processes in Acrobat, integrate them into a batch sequence, or even turn them into executable Droplets you can run from the desktop.

So, are you ready to explore Acrobat in a different way? Ready to “ooh” and “ahh”? Wondering how much time you’ll save yourself? Of course you are – and I’ll see you at MAX.

Donna's 60 minute session is only scheduled to be delivered once during MAX this year and seating is limited so sign up as soon as possible. In the MAX scheduler, look for this session.

Best Kept Secrets of Acrobat Revealed: Batches, Fixes, and Checks
Learn about many of the capabilities in Acrobat 9 Pro that contribute to a quicker and more accurate workflow. See how to work with Preflight (a way to verify that your PDF file contains only the features, fonts, and formatting you've specified) and the vast range of fixes and checks available, how to modify existing features, and how to create custom profiles that address various workflow issues. Finally, turn all that into a Preflight Droplet, an executable that automatically processes files according to a particular profile. Also, learn the secrets behind incorporating batch sequences into a typical workflow.

October 7 at 05:00PM

The Acrobat 9.1 SDK documentation is here!

The Acrobat 9.1 SDK documentation is available in the Acrobat 9.1 SDK download. For offline use, you can download the SDK documentation to your local drive.

One of the great new changes to the 9 version of the Acrobat SDK is that we began to use LiveDocs. This change lets you see the latest documentation updates and provide feedback to the SDK team about the documentation.

If you are interested in using Acrobat for 3D, this is the release for you. The Acrobat 9.1 SDK includes enhancements for 3D (part of Acrobat 9 SDK 3D Update 200810), and various bug fixes.

Note: For Windows Users - The documentation is supplied as HTML in a single ZIP file. There are some very long path names in the container so you may see errors when you unzip it, at least I did when I tried to expand it onto my desktop. With WinZip, it looks like the ZIP file is corrupted; it's not. It's just that the file names are too long and the uncompressed file can't be created. To resolve this, create a folder (with a short name like "SDK") in the root of your drive and decompress the ZIP into that folder. Everything should work just fine after that. This isn't an issue on the Mac.

LiveDocs online link for the Acrobat 9.1 SDK.

Ali Hanyaloglu: Adobe Systems
Ali Hanyaloglu first started with Adobe nearly 13 years ago, and is now helping customers and partners learn, understand and use Acrobat technology as part of the worldwide Adobe Acrobat product marketing team. As Product Evangelist for Acrobat and an Adobe Certified Expert, he is a frequent speaker at seminars and conferences, and is the writer for the "The Same Page" blog:

About MAX this year, Ali says:

You just have to take a look at the sessions and session descriptions on Adobe Acrobat at MAX 2009 and you can see why so many say “Wow! Acrobat can really do all that? I had no idea!” Adobe MAX is a unique opportunity to learn from some of the most experienced people in their fields. I feel very fortunate to be able to present alongside some true gurus, and to get to talk to and meet like-minded attendees who can only be described as “hungry for knowledge!”

PDF files are everywhere on the web today. In fact, there are hundreds of millions of them. Some think of it as being second nature to post a document for others to view on screen and in print, in their browser or when they are offline, that preserves the fidelity of the source document. But just as web content authors and developers are always conscious of the experience viewers have in their browser of choice (they are, aren’t they?!), the same should always be true of PDF documents that are posted. This is why we are repeating my session from Adobe MAX 2008 called “PDF Files via the Web: Creating a Better Experience” with some new tips and best practices.

With a little planning and pre-work, it is possible to give viewers an optimal PDF document reading experience. Sitting there, looking at a blank screen, while a large PDF file downloads, isn’t necessarily the fault of the PDF software, but is due to an unoptimized PDF file from the originator. Then making that long document hard to navigate because it doesn’t include things like bookmarks, or forgetting to make it searchable, only further risks me abandoning that file and moving on to something else.

This is especially important if that viewer is someone who cannot see the screen or use a keyboard and mouse because they have a disability. Yes, ensuring PDF documents are universally accessible may be a requirement in your country or jurisdiction, but this is a topic I am especially passionate about for more than just ensuring documents are available to all. Making sure documents are accessible also helps with viewing those documents on mobile devices such as the popular eBook reading devices, and being able to reuse that PDF document in another way.

If you are not sure what I mean by that last statement, or you do and want to prevent people from doing that, then you will just have to sign up for my session and find out!

Ali's 60 minute session is only scheduled to be delivered once during MAX this year and seating is limited so sign up as soon as possible. In the MAX scheduler, look for this session.

PDF Files via the Web: Creating a Better Experience
Learn how to get PDF files to behave on the web the way that you and your viewers want. We'll share best practices for making sure that PDF files are easy to read, navigate, and access, as well as details on how to make PDF files as streamlined as possible without losing quality.

October 5th at 05:00PM

Acrobat Rocks! - Literally

Harry Hemus: Dividi Projects
Harry is based in the UK and has created some incredible PDF documents, all which started life as either Photoshop or InDesign documents. He's the guy who created the rich PDF that was created for David Gilmour (of Pink Floyd fame) to share a live performance of “A Great Day for Freedom” with his fans. Harry founded Dividi Projects which creates interactive, rich-media PDF documents, e-brochures, and presentations for corporations and organizations. The company began by delivering projects on DVD, but after investing in a range of Adobe solutions, he quickly discovered that he could improve how clients deploy their marketing and communications projects using Adobe Acrobat software.

About MAX this year Harry says:

PDF documents are an amazing delivery vehicle, given that it can carry almost any of the very clever 'Rich Media' items available today, and it does so with a familiar, non-threatening free reader interface. SIMPLE!

In my session, graphic design is at the very top of the agenda, (and this from a guy who is absolutely NOT a designer, but knows "ugly" when he sees it) and it will highlight how designers should not be scared of creating rich media projects using applications such as InDesign and Photoshop by designing beyond print. Marketers and communicators who need to "deliver" information and truly engage with their audience should see this!

Oh and it will contain some really cool music!

You can read more about Harry and Dividi Projects in our Customer Showcase and watch the new video that we recently posted on the Acrobat page. Look for the "Acrobat spotlight" area on the right.

We've been lucky enough to schedule Harry's 60 minute session twice during MAX this year but seating is limited so sign up as soon as possible. In the MAX scheduler, look for this session.

Wow Your Audience with Multimedia PDF Documents
Join U.K.-based Harry Hemus for a demonstration of some incredible PDF documents, all of which started life as static, non-interactive collateral. He'll show how to use various Creative Suite tools to create compelling content by being aware of what can truly be achieved by using Acrobat to "activate" static artwork. Hemus simply works with the user interface; you don't need to be a developer, just willing to consider a few basic scripting tips.

October 5 at 03:30PM
October 7 at 09:30AM

Grab yourself a cup of coffee and get settled in for a long post. I've got a lot of new for you with this one.

To start with, the MAX 2009 Session Catalog and Scheduler has launched. With that, I'm also starting a series of profiles about the speakers that I've arranged to deliver some fantastic content for you. Look for new profiles every day for a week or so. If you already know about the scheduler, jump to the first profile on Lori DeFurio - otherwise, keep reading.

The MAX 2009 Scheduler

The MAX 2009 web site offers a dynamic session scheduler that allows you to easily browse sessions and labs to build your personal MAX schedule. Search through over 200 sessions and 100 labs by various criteria, including required skill level, track, audience, featured products, and speaker.

If you've already registered for MAX, click the button below to launch the MAX Scheduler.

• To gain access to the scheduler, enter the same username and password you created during the MAX 2009 registration process.
• To create your personal MAX 2009 schedule, simply drag and drop the sessions and labs that you would like to attend into the My Schedule tray at the bottom of the MAX Scheduler. Be sure to take note of prerequisites needed for any courses that are intermediate or advanced so that you are well prepared for the course.

NOTE: Sessions and labs fill up early. Be sure to create your personal MAX schedule as soon as possible to guarantee your sessions and labs.

If you haven't registered yet, do it by August 10 and receive US$200 off the regular price of a full conference pass.

MAX 2009 Speaker Profiles

Lori DeFurio: Adobe Systems
For over thirteen years at Adobe, Lori DeFurio has worn many hats. Throughout it all, she's worked closely with Adobe Acrobat software, first as a systems engineer involved with the sales team, then as the Acrobat/PDF technical evangelist. Currently, she runs Acrobat Enablement – enabling Adobe’s sales and channel partners to be successful selling Acrobat, and working closely with the Acrobat User Community. In addition to writing an informative blog at blogs.adobe.com/loridefurio, Lori travels around the world, speaking at conferences, workshops, helping anyone who is interested learn how to get the most out of Adobe Acrobat software. Prior to joining Adobe, Lori served as a technical consultant at Information Architects, an SGML/XML consulting firm, and was a pre and post-sales engineer at Agfa, a developer, manufacturer and distributor of products and systems for the making, processing and reproduction of images.

About MAX this year Lori says:

I’m excited with the prospect of Adobe MAX 2009. This is my third year presenting a lab on discovering what Acrobat can do. As you may be aware, I’ve been working with Acrobat for the entire 13 years I’ve been at Adobe, and it is my pleasure to present information and have someone from the audience say “I didn’t know Acrobat could do that!” I’m going to cover new functionality introduced in Acrobat 9 as well some core capabilities that have been in Acrobat since the “early days”.

Lori will be joined by Ian Campbell from the UK and you can catch them in the 90 minute lab described below. Labs fill up early and fast and there are only 48 slots per lab this year so sign up as soon as possible.

I Didn't Know Acrobat Could Do That
Come join us for a look into what's possible with Acrobat 9 — from creating a PDF Portfolio and embedding multimedia in your documents to creating and distributing Acrobat forms (with calculations) to adding navigation aids (links, buttons, or bookmarks) to your content. Samples will be distributed.

October 7 at 11:00AM
October 6 at 01:00PM
October 6 at 03:30PM

Why can't I add ZIP files to a PDF Portfolio?

Ok - so this isn't exactly a developer topic but the question has popped up in my inbox with enough regularity that I thought I'd write an article about it.

You can try to add a ZIP file to a PDF Portfolio but then you see the warning dialog to the right. If you choose to click "OK", the ZIP file will be added to the PDF Portfolio. Great!

Actually - not so great. No one will be able to open or extract the ZIP from the Portfolio unless they hack their registry (Windows) or plist (Mac). So even though you were able to add the .ZIP file, it's of very little use if you plan on sharing that PDF Portfolio with a broader audience.

The list of embargoed file types is a lot longer than just ZIP. You see the same warning if you attach EXE, VBS, BAT, DLL, or JS because they are associated with malicious programs, macros, and viruses that can damage your computer; the list goes on and on.

PDF Portfolios use ZIP Compression:

So here's the good news, when you add a folder full of files to a PDF Portfolio guess what happens. That's right - Acrobat uses ZIP compression to bundle them up. You don't actually need to go through the process of zipping a folder full of files and then add the ZIP to the Portfolio. Just skip the zipping step add the folder directly to the Portfolio. The file size of the PDF Portfolio and a ZIP with the same set of files in it is virtually identical plus you get a great Flash UI to help people find what they need inside the Portfolio.

This is it! The last in my seven part series on developing custom PDF Portfolio layouts has been posted. This one discusses adding files and resources. Jump on over to Part 7 and take a look.

What now? You didn't really think there would be only seven did you? I'm just getting started. Now that you have a chance to understand the basics with simple (and frankly.... ugly) examples, it's time to make something functional and pretty.

I'm thinking about writing a few "utility" navigators and have a few ideas of my own but am interested in hearing from my dear readers as well so please comment with your ideas. Here's a short list of what I've been thinking about.

In addition to the utility navigators, I'm going to try putting together a few more visually stunning examples with some cooler navigation and animations so stay tuned.

One of the ways that Adobe Acrobat 9 can help you control your work is to make it easier to remove sensitive information before distributing it outside your organization. For those of you not in the legal profession, this is called redaction. Redaction is designed to permanently remove from the document all content that is being redacted and to put an indicator that this happened in it's place.

The way that redaction works in Acrobat 9 is that you first create redaction marks which doesn't remove any content and then after you have worked your way through the document completely, you apply those redactions and the information is remove and replaced with, usually black, boxes and optionally codes that indicate the reason the information was removed.

More Fun with the JavaScript API:
If you've spent any time in Acrobat SDK land, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the redaction markup is just special type of annotation. To demonstrate how easy it is to extend the redaction functionality through JavaScript, I wrote "Joel's Redaction Utilities"; a simple JavaScript that can be used to toggle redaction markup and highlight annotations. The bulk of the script is actually stolen from my earlier post which iterated through every annotation in the PDF file and.... well.... rather than repeat myself, you can read all about it here.

The beauty of working with the different annotation types in Acrobat JavaScript is that the annotation objects share many of the same common properties. Redaction markup is an annotation of the type "Redact" and highlights are annotations of the type.... you guessed it.... "Highlight". The one thing you need to know about toggling annotation types is that you actually can't. The "type" property of an annotation object is read-only. What you need to do (and what's demonstrated in the example JavaScript) is to collect from the original annotation all of the properties that you are necessary to create a new one of a different type in it's place. Then you add the new annotation and destroy the original. In the case of this example I get the "quads", an array of coordinates representing the corner points of a rectangle, and the page number of the original annotation then use those settings as properties for the new one. The new annotation shows up at the exact same coordinates as the original but behaves differently because it's of a different type. It's kind of like those transporter accident episodes of Star Trek TOS; all of the properties of the original are basically the same but now Spock has a goatee.

This example demonstrates:

• Adding SubMenus and Menu Items
• Detecting annotation properties
• Deleting annotations
• Use of the thermometer object

This JavaScript code will add a menu item "Joel's Redaction Utilities" under "Comments" menu.
Under that menu, you will find two additional menu items.

• Convert Redaction Marks to Highlights
  This menu item will convert all Redaction Marks to Highlights. The Highlight color will be the same color as your default (usually Yellow).
• Convert Highlights to Redaction Marks
  This menu item will convert all Highlights to Redaction Marks - The Redactions will not be applied by this script though it can be easily modified to do so.
  

Installing Joel’s Redaction Utilities
1. Quit Acrobat if it is already running
2. Download "Joel's Redaction Utilities" and then copy the ADBE_JFG_RemoveMatchingAnnots.js file into the following file location:

a. WIN XP
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat \9.0\JavaScripts

b. WIN VISTA
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0\JavaScripts

c. MAC OSX
/Users/YOURUSER/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86/ JavaScripts

3. Restart Acrobat

I got an interesting request from Rick Borstein who is one of our Acrobat Product Specialists. It seems that one of his customers is using the new Compare Documents feature in Acrobat 9 for long legal documents. This is actually a perfect use case for this feature but the customer is hampered by the fact that Compare Documents can sometimes find too much. As a text heavy legal document, they don't have much need for the per pixel differences in graphics and certainly don't need to see "Matching graphic not found" beside every change bar.

The customer was either looking for a way to "tune" what Acrobat was looking for, which will need to wait for the next release, or simply have an easy way to remove the change indicators that they don't need. The one tricky part was that they wanted a user interface (UI) to delete all of the change indicators that matched a different set of criteria. I'm not much of a UI designer and even with Windjack's Acrodialogs plug-in, creating a UI in Acrobat JavaScript would have turned this fun experiment into.... well.... work!

Background:
When Acrobat 9 compares documents, the change indicators that it creates are actually annotations. The Acrobat JavaScript API has been able to manipulate annotations since version 5.0 and that part of the API has evolved quite a bit since then. Because you can ask Acrobat JavaScript to collect the annotations into an array and filter them based on a variety of criteria, it doesn't require a lot of code to grab all of the annotations in a document and process them; "for" loops can be a lazy programmers best friend.

The Script:
By installing the JavaScript in a folder at the application level, I was able to add a menu item that makes this simple script behave like an Acrobat feature available to any document.

To solve the UI problem, I decided write the script so that it could detect which annotation was selected, determine it's properties and then look for more just like it. That way the user just needs to select an annotation, choose my menu item "Delete Annotations of the Same Type and with the Same Content as the one Selected" and all that's it. No UI required.

The links in the bullet list will take you to the appropriate section of the Acrobat JavaScript Reference.

The example demonstrates

• Adding SubMenus and Menu Items
• Detecting which annotation is selected
• Detecting annotation properties
• Deleting annotations
• Use of the thermometer object

This JavaScript will add a menu item "Joel's Comment Utilities" under "Comments" menu.
Under that menu, you will find three additional menu items.

• Delete "Matching graphic not found" Annotations
  This menu item will delete all "Highligh" annotations with content "Matching graphic not found"
  
  
• Delete Annotations of the Same Type and with the Same Content as the one Selected
  To use this menu item, select one of the type of comment that occurs frequently that you want to remove all of then select the menu item.
  All comments of the same type and same content will be deleted.
  
  
• Count Annotations of the Same Type and with the Same Content as the one Selected
  Same as above except that comments are not deleted, they are simply counted.
  

Installing Joel’s Comment Utilities
1. Quit Acrobat if it is already running
2. Download "Joel's Comment Utilities" and then copy the ADBE_JFG_RemoveMatchingAnnots.js file into the following file location:

a. WIN XP
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat \9.0\JavaScripts

b. WIN VISTA
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Acrobat\9.0\JavaScripts

c. MAC OSX
/Users/YOURUSER/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Acrobat/9.0_x86/ JavaScripts

3. Restart Acrobat

Using the Reduce Comments Script
1. Open a PDF containing comparison comments
2. Choose one of the following commands:

a. Comments | "Joel’s Comment Utilities" | Delete Matching Graphic Not Found Comments
    - or –
b. With another type of comment selected, choose: Comments | Joel’s Comment Utilities | Delete Annotations with same content as one selected