I just posted the first two of a seven part series that discusses writing custom PDF Portfolio Layouts or "Navigators" as we call them in "Acrobat Developer Land". I'll also take this opportunity to launch the PDF Developer Junkie Web.Blogs are great for all kinds of things like news and short articles or even a series of articles. However, sometimes, organizing articles in reverse chronological order just isn't helpful. So - I created a web site to house all of my "How-to" articles.

If you've been interested in learning about how to create your own Navigators and you've got some ActionScript 3 skills, jump into the links below and get started. Each article has a sample Flex project attached as well as the Acrobat ActionScript SDK (prerelease version).

The "Customizing PDF Portfolio Layouts" Series

• Part 1: The "Hello World" Example
• Part 2: Your First .NAV File
• Part 3: Previewing Files and Navigating Folders
• Part 4: Working with Thumbnail

Coming soon I'll have...

• Part 5: Working with Metadata
• Part 6: Sorting
• Part 7: Adding Resources and Files
  

Acrobat 9 delivers native support for Adobe Flash® technology and the ability to unify a wide range of content in rich PDF Portfolios as well as other cool features. Read the full release here.

A trial version will be available for download. Click here to be notified of availability.

A New Release:

The native supoport for Flash in Acrobat and Reader 9 lets us support three important new capabilities in PDF; Native support for FLV and H.264 playback, native support for SWF playing in the new Rich Media Annotations, and Flash-based interfaces on top of PDF Packages which we are now calling PDF Portfolios in recognition of the new highly branded customizable experience they can provide.

In the coming weeks I'll be posting information and examples on how to work with these new exciting technologies. Subscribe to this feed to stay up to date.

An image of what a PDF Portfolio can look like is below.

A New Look

I've overhauled the look of the site. I hope you enjoy it. It's a little cleaner and easier to read I hope.

A New Direction

With the announcement of Acrobat 9, I've decided to take the PDF Developer Jnkie blog in a new direction. I'll be focusing this blog on developing with Acrobat 9 and have created a new blog specifically for IT managers, power users and other IT professionals who work wit PDF technologies.The "IT Matters" blog is located here. Please visit and subscribe if you're interested in deploying Acrobat and Reader or Security related stuff.

I've started a new series of white papers discussing PDF and XPS. The main theme behind these pieces is that the details matter. When you're trying to run your business and you work with electronic documents in any part of your workflow, and who isn't these days, the "it-works-most-of-the-time" solutions just don't cut it. The details matter when people are making descisions based on the documents that you print, distribute on the web, and exchange through email.

The first two topics relate to print workflows and electronic approvals and I've got a few more in the works as well. If you have a suggestion for an article or have questions about any of the content in these two, please feel free to comment here or email me directly.

NOTE: These PDF files are protected using Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES. You will need to use the Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat to view these files.

Consider This: Print Workflows
Consider This: Electronic Approvals

Most web developers create links to PDF files so that Adobe Acrobat or the Adobe Reader takes over the entire browser window. Few people leverage the fact that you can display a PDF file in a web page just like any other graphic by using the embed tag in your HTML file. You can also use PDF Open Parameters in the src property to make the document look better on that page but those don’t work the same way in all browsers.

Careful attention to crafting the HTML page, setting the embed tag parameters properly and setting properties in your PDF correctly can make a PDF embedded in an HTML page work just as seamlessly as a SWF file.

Below is an example of simply adding the PDF file name to the src property of the embed tag; it doesn’t look that great.

<embed src="FullScreenEmbed.pdf" width="500" height="375">

In the example below, I’ve added parameters to the URL that suppress the toolbar, navigation panes, and scrollbars of the Acrobat or Reader user interface. This looks much better. You can navigate the PDF by clicking on it (to activate the embedded PDF) and then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to scroll through the document. The other advantage of this method is that you don’t need to change the PDF to provide a better experience; you simply adjust the way it looks by adding parameters to the URL.

<embed src="FullScreenEmbed.pdf#toolbar=0&navpanes=0&scrollbar=0" width="500" height="375">

The example below demonstrates the solution that, in my opinion works the best. Here, I used Acrobat to set the PDF to “Open in Full Screen mode” in the “Document Properties” dialog box.

<embed src="FullScreenEmbed.pdf" width="500" height="375"/>

Setting the document to open in full screen mode will cause the PDF to fill the entire area specified in the width and height properties of the embed tag. The PDF page size is 10 inches by 7.5 inches so I use a width of 500 pixels and a height of 375 pixels so that the aspect ratio of the embed object window and the PDF match. The PDF will not stretch to fill the area in the same way that an image file would. Instead, the PDF will display in the center of the area and fill the rest with the “Full Screen Appearance Background Color” which is an Acrobat user preference but their color choice may not fit with the style of your web page so it’s best to keep the aspect ration the same. Of course, your document can change the background color setting through JavaScript by adding, for example, “app.fs.backgroundColor = color.white;” as a document level JavaScript. You can read about how to use the built-in color arrays and create your own on page 193 of the JavaScript™ for Acrobat® API Reference.

Setting the document to open in full screen mode will also cause the document to “play” in the browser same way that it would if it were in full screen mode in Acrobat or Reader. All of your animations and page transitions will display properly.

This question has come up a number of times recently and the information is out there but can be hard to find.

You can display and print a PDF file with Acrobat and Adobe Reader from the command line. These commands are unsupported, but have worked for some developers. There is no documentation for these commands other than what is listed here.

I hope that helps.