The Same Page

We already had browser-based reviews from Acrobat 5.0, and then email-based reviews in Acrobat 7.0. So why do we now have Shared Reviews to deal with too?

A good question! It is an important one to consider if you are looking at standardizing on a way to conduct reviews on documents as quickly and as pain-free as possible.

If you are not familiar with Shared Reviews, then I am sorry to say this is not the blog entry to find out. But don't stop reading! There are lots of good articles and tutorials on the subject, including a video tutorial yours truly created last year, posted on this page, and an article on this very subject here from 2006 with Randy Swineford, Acrobat Product Manager.

So why are Shared Reviews the way to go...?

1. You do not need Acrobat 8 to be a reviewer. That reason alone could justify the cost of Acrobat 8 Professional or Acrobat 3D Version 8, as those are the software applications you need to initiate a Shared Review AND enable the document for commenting and markup in the free Adobe Reader 8. Basically, it means virtually anyone can participate in a review cycle. Note, Acrobat 8 Standard can initiate a Shared Review, but it does not have the Reader-enablement goodness.
2. The PDF document can be distributed anyway you like. Via the web. To an email list. From a network folder. On your childs iPod. It does not matter. It is a totally flexible workflow, because all the information that Acrobat or Adobe Reader need to participate in a Shared Review is baked in to the PDF document itself (at 400 degrees fahrenheit for 35 minutes, in case you were wondering). Whether you open the PDF locally in Acrobat or Adobe Reader directly, or within Internet Explorer, Firefox Windows or Safari, you can go ahead and give your feedback.
3. You can get feedback from people almost instantaneously. Shared Reviews work by uploading comments to a Shared Location: a network share, a WebDAV folder (such as Apple's .mac iDisk), or a Microsoft Sharepoint Workspace. Other reviewers can see what everyone else is saying by reading those comments from the shared location. And Acrobat and Reader 8's Tracker And Shared Reviews Welcome screen also read those comments so that they can show who has responded and how many comments have been made.
4. You can work online or offline. Unlike browser-based reviews which required you to be online at all times to submit and view comments, Shared Reviews cache the comments you add to the document until you tell Acrobat or Reader to publish them, or they get published automatically after a certain period of time (that is set in the Preferences, by the way). If you are working offline, the comments are cached in the PDF until you are back online and ready to publish. If you are disconnected, Acrobat or Reader will know it, cache your comments, and try to reconnect to the shared location to check for and publish only the new or updated comments. And if after all that you still cannot connect to the shared location server, Acrobat or Reader 8 will ask you a) if you would like to email your comments back to the initiator who can upload them on your behalf and b) if you would like to see ways to improve your social and professional status so that you always have access to the shared location server (kidding on that last one).
5. Comments are tagged with metadata about you as a reviewer. Nothing too revealing ("this reviewer is currently participating in his pajamas" isn't in there), but information such as name, email, and a time and date stamp are included. This has a couple of benefits: 1) everyone can see who said what and 2) other reviewers cannot change your comments. That last one is particularly important. If you want to comment on someone else's comment, you can just reply in the pop-up for each comment or markup. It's like social networking chat, but with a purpose.

If any one of the above reasons seem compelling to you, and if you have not tried a Shared Review in Acrobat 8, it may be time do so. It really is easy to start a Shared Review session, and even easier to participate. Grab a document you are working on right now, convert it to PDF, and send it for Shared Review using Acrobat 8 to someone you know will give you glowing-but-constructive feedback, no matter how bad your writing skills are. Have fun!

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

An acrobatusers.com forum member posed the question:

I can't figure out how to change the size of the sticky note icon. Is it possible to change the size of the icon? I can change the size the the sticky note it's self, but not the icon.

The (correct) response from forum moderator Lori Kassuba was:

You cannot change the size of the sticky note icon only the size of the pop-up.

This got me thinking...if you would like to have a resizable sticky note, and you can't use the built-in Sticky Note, why not create your own using Acrobat's Custom Stamps?

Stamp annotations can be resized and rotated, and have their own pop-ups for you to enter text in to. Sound like a good idea to you? Then read on to learn how to create your own if you haven't done that before. These instructions apply to Acrobat 8, but work similarly in previous versions.

First of all, create your customer stamp in whatever application you prefer to use, or find one online that you are legally allowed to use (in this case, I'm gratefully using one from the Simplistica Icon Set at http://dryicons.com/).

You can either convert that stamp to PDF, if it isn't already. Or if it's one of the file formats that Acrobat can convert directly, just keep it in that format.

Now in Acrobat, open the Manage Custom Stamps dialog box by clicking on the Review & Comment taskbar button and choosing Comment and Markup Tools > Stamps > Manage Stamps... You can also get to this command from the Stamp tool drop-down menu on the Review & Comment toolbar or from the Comments menu.

Once that is open click "Create" and browse to your PDF or image containing your customer stamp for your custom sticky note.

After clicking OK a couple of times, the Create Custom Stamp dialog will open. You can reselect the image for stamp. I assume you don't change your mind that quickly, so we'll skip that and go to straight to setting the Category and Name.

The Category is a good way to organize custom stamps. Although you can choose one of the existing ones in Acrobat, I suggest creating your own category. In this case I've created a new category called "My Stamps" by typing in to the field.

The Name is very important. Use a short but descriptive name: luckily when you go to choose your custom stamp in the future Acrobat will present a preview of it, so you don't have to be too explicit.

If the image you chose was a large, high-resolution one, Acrobat gives you the option to downsample it so it's smaller and easier to manage.

Once you've clicked OK a couple more times, you'll be able to use your new stamp. The easiest way to do is to use the Stamps Palette. Else, just select it from the Stamp Tool drop-down list and click on the page.

To resize it, click on the stamp once, and then click and drag out (or in) one of the corner handles. To rotate it, grab the handle at the top, click and drag it to the left or the right. Finally to add a pop-up note, just like the built-in Sticky Note, double-click the custom stamp.

Having fun with reviewing PDF documents now? Oh, we've only just begun!

Posted by Ali Hanyaloglu at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)