Duff Johnson’s PDF Perspective

Immediately following the release of Reader 8.1, I informed readers that:

The down-side [of the Kinko’s button] is that taking unnecessary partisan positions in affiliated industries and the effective denial of equivalent functionality to all users of the software can undermine the sense of ubiquity, and ubiquity is the essence of the Reader value proposition.

Adobe has now seen the light. It turned out to be an oncoming freight-train belonging to the print industry, who credit themselves as Adobe’s oldest and best customers. Result: Reader 8.1.1, sans Kinko’ button, is due in October.

Like Ted, I was hoping that Adobe would take real advantage of the hubbub and create a new, more platform-oriented feature. The timely burial of “The Kinko’s Edition” could be converted to a significant opportunity. Adobe could make a simple api available to registered printers such that PDF creators could have their own programmable buttons appear on their Certified PDFs.

The Certification mechanism could be of real help here, because Certificates could be used to unlock simple JavaScript calls for “Creator button control”. (More on the promise - and reality - of Certified PDF some other time). Kinko’s (or any other printer) could then offer a service wherein they return a PDF of every print-job with their button added to the toolbar for triggering easy reprints, account modifications or other purposes. There are all sorts of possibilities for getting more mileage out of Trusted documents in this case - as long as it isn’t hardwired to a single vendor.

For the print industry (and indeed, for the rest of us), Reader appears close to a public trust, a notion which Adobe has certainly fostered, if not directly. Such beliefs are nonetheless our own misfortune, and Adobe is entirely within its rights to do what it will with Reader. Adobe Systems is a business, and businesses get to develop and market their products as they see fit, right or wrong. Nonetheless, my hope is that Adobe takes away the following lessons from the “Kinko’s Edition” debacle:

1. Reader is a precious software franchise not only because it is free, but because it is fundamentally nonpartisan where it counts. For example, Reader will open almost any old, malformed PDF from any source (including non-Adobe sources) without drawing attention to the fact. Likewise, Reader should appear completely agnostic about print vendors unless the creator explicitly chooses otherwise.
2. If Reader itself is to be sullied with advertising, the responsibility for that glory should be placed squarely on the creator (with the help of Adobe server products, of course). We can safely say that if PDF creators had a new opportunity to add features to the Reader toolbar, they wouldn’t complain about it.
3. Reader is SO valuable that it should not be used, by itself, to generate revenue, unless that method is author-driven. The Yahoo, Google and Kinko’s deals all “sullied” the brand. There’s greater value to be found in finding ways to serve everyone equally. The toolbar should remain in the service of the platform, not the next business quarter.
4. For platform software, ubiquity and customer enablement remain the true keys of success. All “improvements” that could impact these essentials should draw suspicion, rigorous scrutiny and deep consultation with affected industries prior to implementation, far more (clearly) than has gone before. This is the price of owning such a deep and wide franchise as Reader.

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The deities managing major software release schedules didn’t smile on Adobe late last year.  Acrobat 8 rolled out just before Vista became the latest Microsoft mega-project to emerge years late and to weak (very weak) applause.

As a result, Adobe was in the somewhat uncomfortable position of launching new software that didn’t actually work as intended on XP’s newly released designated successor OS.  Arguments for Vista remain light on substance, heavy on “ribbons” (and RAM).  Buyers of new machines are glumly accepting the Newer Is Better mantra, but few are rushing to adopt the new OS.  Vista just isn’t a lot better than XP, and precious few users come close to appreciating the distinction more than they curse fresh learning curves, software upgrade costs and other obstacles to Getting Real Work Done.

The upshot is that Acrobat’s temporary inability to gain full operation under Vista may not have caused that much stress after all.

Anyhow, those days are over, 8.1 is out.  For details, check out Ted’s latest article, he’s summarized the goodies nicely.

For my part, I’m here to commend Adobe for one very important development - the timely release of a Technical Note that identifies changes and (very important) the bug-fixes that went into 8.1.  This sort of thing is a long-time request of the Acrobat power-user community, and it’s nice to see up-to-the-minute attention to this point from Adobe.  Some bugs do remain, of course, and there’s at least one new bug that I’ll personally enjoy seeing squashed in a future release. But that’s in the nature of the beast.

OK, so why the Big Deal, the “Full Dot” release?  Adobe doesn’t do it very often, and in this case, the new release is more about engineering enhancements than new features.  Some of the changes (Vista support, Office 2007 support) are things you’d just expect from an expensive mainstream business desktop application such as Acrobat.  Better integration with Adobe’s InDesign and improved Designer/XFA forms is welcome, but most users couldn’t care less.  So what’s up, Doc?

Apart from the underwhelming news that Acrobat now supports Vista and MS Office 2007, there are two main changes that consumers are likely to notice. I’m just not sure either one is for the better.

First and most obvious (some would say, garish), is the new Kinko’s button appearing on Reader’s default toolbar. (Acrobat users craving this functionality may add this button via toolbar customization).  Following the new tradition of glorified weblinks deployed as toolbar buttons, the new Kinko’s button launches an web-based process that can result in the upload, printing, binding and delivery of your PDF via a Kinko’s service center.

The big up-side, I guess, is that Adobe gets paid for their endorsement of the Kinko’s printing platform for US-based users of Reader.  That’s a lot of people, so it must be worth something.  It’s also true that users in the US get the option of sending PDFs directly to Kinko’s (and Kinko’s alone) from Reader.

The down-side is that taking unnecessary partisan positions in affiliated industries and the effective denial of equivalent functionality to all users of the software can undermine the sense of ubiquity, and ubiquity is the essence of the Reader value proposition.

Adobe shouldn’t inject themselves into the print-vendor playing field - that is - unless they want to give 3rd parties yet more reasons to find ways around using Reader.  The Kinko’s button can’t be reprogrammed for the PDF author’s choice of vendor.  Whether your application properly includes print service bureau functions or not, the “Kinko’s Edition” Reader is always ready to help spend your money and kill more trees. (Although for some reason, the Customize Toolbars UI in Reader 8.1 strongly implies that the Kinko’s button is only available if Document Rights are enabled, which certainly isn’t the case!)

Users outside the US (there are a few) get to look at the Kinko’s button and click it for fun, but no more  Deployed globally in the industry-leading viewer for the leading electronic document format, this button is useless outside the US.  That’s not good geopolitics; the US already has a perception problem abroad.  Do US-based software companies really want into that act?

OK, you can switch off those whine filters now.

The second change consumers are likely to notice in 8.1 is the new “quick and simple” PDF creation option, which uses the EMF printing functionality in Vista, highly preferable (in speed terms) to the thrashing of the Make PDF plugin, if nothing else.

What is a “quick and simple” PDF, anyhow?  Who cares, right? It’s quick and it “looks fine”.  That’s all most users have ever wanted to know, and now they can get it from Adobe software as well.  Sound familiar?  Old-timers may be forgiven if it seems that the long-defunct PDF Writer, once buried by Adobe for making lousy PDF, has risen again.

Adobe are clearly responding to a very real desire for a faster PDF creation method, one more akin (ulp!) to Microsoft’s own EMF-based Save As PDF Add-In, or the PDF Export feature in the free Open Office suite, which is also blazing fast and turns out a plausible PDF.

The question is my mind is whether it’s a good idea for the health of the PDF platform (as opposed to Acrobat’s next business quarter) for Adobe to stoop to generic methods for PDF creation, thereby promoting dumbed-down output and lowering the barriers to the competition.  Microsoft’s PDF-from-EMF is, one assumes, just as good as Adobe’s PDF-from-EMF.

On the other hand, perhaps the mere fact that users will be offered the choice between “quick and simple” and “regular” PDF might get them thinking about all the things they might be missing if they go “quick and simple”.  Time will tell. In any event, PDF Writer is BACK.

I learn something (in fact, usually two or more somethings) at every single PDF event. Last week’s Adobe Acrobat PDF Conference in Orlando was no exception, and I’m not talking about Al Gore’s magnetic presentation on global climate change.

This tip is really worth the mention because it is so simple, yet of real value to those who deliver PDFs for presentation purposes.  That’s a lot of folks (although not including Gore, who uses Apple’s Keynote).

(A BIG thank-you to Adobe Systems PDF Developer Evangelist Joel Geraci for this tip, and especially for not rubbing my nose in the fact that the solution was so near-to-hand!)

OK, perhaps you are wondering about my problem.  Let’s take a look.

Open any PDF using Adobe Acrobat or Reader 8.  Unless you view it in full-screen mode, you are very likely seeing a set of icons to the left side of the page - icons almost as big and loud as the copies I’ve posted here on the left.

In version 8, these icons provide access to a variety of systems that may be available within the document. The most familiar of these Navigation Panes are bookmarks and thumbnails, but there are at least 14 altogether, not including “auxiliary” panes. Click on a navigation pane button and the corresponding pane opens to the right.

Prior to version 8, navigation pane buttons consisted of tiny demure gray folders with overlapping hard-to-read labels nestled together on the upper left edge of the page.  The design didn’t really help users switch between panes, but these little labels were so small and quiet they made virtually no impact on the presentation of the page, and were easily ignored.

Acrobat 8 introduced a much wider Navigation Panel Button bar, with big, brassy icons… but no obvious way to turn them OFF.  Yes, you can right-click, Hide and Save each file, but that’s far too much like real WORK, and it can’t be done in batch, nor from a menu item, nor with a (published) javascript.  In short, it’s Not Obvious, and it should be.

This is where Joel’s Acrobat 8 Tip of the Month Award comes in.

To HIDE the Navigation Pane Buttons, so your uses don’t suffer them when you don’t want them to, simply check Hide Window Controls in the Document Properties (Control-D) Initial View dialog.  In Acrobat 8, this switch has effect of hiding both the navigation pane buttons AND the split-window icon and vertical scroll bar on the right side of the page. Critically, this feature may be managed on any number of PDF files at once using a simple Batch Process in Acrobat Professional.

Thanks, Joel!

Readers may recall that a few months ago I was contacted by a writer for the magazine now known as Mac|Life (formerly MacAddict) for a review of Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional.

While I offered a number of thoughts at the time, few made it into the April issue, which isn’t surprising - I can be very long-winded.

More interesting (frankly) is the proportion of space allocated to Connect, a rebranded Macromedia product unrelated to Acrobat.  So why spend most of a review of Acrobat talking about Connect?  The only “connection” between Acrobat and Connect is a link to the Connect website from the Acrobat toolbar, so Adobe’s marketing folks clearly know their business.

Rather than read my carping about misguided editorial (and other) judgments, I’ll let you decide for yourself. Here’s the piece (PDF, 180 kb).

Much touted in the new Acrobat release is “Acrobat Connect“, formerly Macromedia’s Breeze.

By now, I’ve participated in several Connect “sessions” as both presenter and presentee, so I thought I’d offer a few observations.

Connect hasn’t really got anything to do with Acrobat, and I’m really unsure why Connect occupies a prominent place in Acrobat 8.0 at all. Connect is something like WebEx, with some clever interactive tweaks. The polling, chat and status facilities are good, but it’s not a trivial affair, and it’s not really about managing or using documents. It might someday benefit from being pressed into service in the “Acrobat family of products”, but that day isn’t here yet.

In the present incarnation, Connect can’t actually use PDF files except in a desktop-sharing (ie, bandwidth-intensive) mode. This simply serves to highlight the lack of any real connection between Acrobat and Connect, even though Connect is available “with” Acrobat, even allegedly “integrated” into it.

While I have certainly experienced a number of connection issues (especially with the VOIP), I understand this is not the norm. Regardless of my circumstances, in today’s world, one can’t really expect that all users have big or stable pipes, be optimized for VOIP, or have adequate speakers or microphones for their environment. Laptops suffering wireless interference is increasingly common. Adobe recommends that presenters and viewers shut down their other chat, email and other applications to allow Connect to hog the bandwidth, and further, that you shut down the Presenter’s video uplink as well. At what point wouldn’t you rather make a YouTube movie or email a PowerPoint?

Even with the current generation of the software, a carefully planned meeting using the polling, chat and other features, and POTS (Ma Bell) for audio can work well, even for remote users. Connect has real potential to be a useful conferencing system for experienced users enjoying 1st class connectivity. As presently constituted, new and infrequent users are going to stumble and fall to a degree that will deliver poor impressions when they count the most.

While Connect sessions may be easily recorded by the Presenter, disclosure of this fact should be made clear to the end-user, visually and otherwise. The Presenter should not be encumbered with the responsibility of reminding each and every attendee that “this session is being recorded”, especially if the session is interactive.

At least some who check out the Connect “offering” through Acrobat come away confused and/or a tad miffed. The general opinion seems to be that Adobe doesn’t make it clear that Connect is not actually a new feature of Acrobat, but a new service, with it’s own (again, non-trivial) fee structure.

Lastly, my accessibility creds force me to point out that there’s nothing remotely accessible about Connect - it’s a free-flowing Flash interface, and screen-readers aren’t welcome here. This will, in the long term, have to be addressed if this technology is to have a big future in government.

All that aside, I like Connect - right down to the nervous anticipation that comes from wondering if it will all fall apart midflight, or that I’ll lose the thread, or go blind from squinting at the non-resizable copy in the UI. I just wonder if it’s properly co-located with Acrobat.

Few people pay much attention to help files. Like the proverbial (and now nearly extinct) Printed Software Manual, most users only crack open the Help menu when in extremis. The preferred method is to blunder though dialogs and settings on a hunt for magic buttons. It takes a serious stumbling block to convince today’s user to sit down for a document that often reads like it was written by Orac.

I’m something of a connoisseur of help systems (readers of this blog may recall an earlier post on the topic), so I thought I’d take a moment to highlight some changes in the way Help content is presented in Acrobat 8.

The Changes

First, Adobe has seemingly abandoned the practice of deploying Acrobat help in PDF form. Acrobat 8 does NOT install ACROHELP.PDF, the traditional conveyance for Acrobat’s Help, at all.

This is, frankly, a welcome development. ACROHELP had become a bit ridiculous, itself a bloated demonstration of why a PDF is NOT always the right format for all content and all contexts, even when the content in question is the official Acrobat documentation itself.
In Acrobat 7, Adobe had resorted to dressing up the ACROHELP file with a specialized (and fairly unappetizing) PDF viewer. With Acrobat 8, Adobe went with functionality over sentiment, delivering an Acrobat help system rather than a “make do” PDF file.

In the new “Complete Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional Help” powered by the Adobe Help Viewer version 1.0, help contents are presented in a crisp, clear navigation system. Breadcrumbs at the top of the page tell you where you are. Pages often include related subjects as expansions of the page, far superior to endless, droning content. This all encourages exploration, and thus, learning.

I find the copy improved overall compared with Acrobat 7’s help - perhaps by association with the slicked-up interface.

The Help system has facilitated several entry-points since Acrobat 6. In Acrobat 8, the “How to” method has been cleaned up, and now appears in the Navigation Panel to the left of the page, as it should. The stand-out new feature of Help, however, has to be the all-new “Getting Started” interface, which does a good job of introducing a variety of higher-end functions to office-workers.

Still a PDF around here somewhere

A PDF version of the Help file remains, but it’s located on the installation disc, and is not installed by default. This file is now properly paginated, to better serve those users who prefer their documentation printed. Thus, it is now possible to say, with feeling; “Oh, go look it up on page 323 in the Acrobat Help file, sonny-boy”.

Summary

With the new Getting Started interface, the new Help offers something new to bridge the gap between user understanding and application terminology. Acrobat needs a lot more help along these lines, but the direction is encouraging. There’s more to do - especially when it comes to recognizing and facilitating user intent - but the changes to Help in Acrobat 8 are praiseworthy.

I’ve been working on “live” files using Acrobat 8 Professional for some time now, so my initial reactions to the latest version of Acrobat are a little more seasoned.

I had this in mind during a recent interview for MacAddict magazine.

Since I went on at greater length than they could possibly print, I thought I would inflict the balance of my words on you, the helpess RSS robots (and occasional human) monitoring this Blog.

> What is your overall opinion of Acrobat 8?

The vast majority of desktop PDF users still think of Acrobat and PDF for basic create/view/print applications - if, that is, they don’t think of them collectively as just “Adobe”. With XPS looming and competition stiffening, Acrobat 8 represents a serious effort on Adobe’s part to awaken end-users to PDF’s higher uses. The redesign is new-user friendly, yet includes some neat tricks for power users that help to smooth out certain grumbles. There’s not a lot that’s strictly speaking “new” in Acrobat 8, but there are a lot of very powerful refinements, and some key additions.

> What are the most important new features for the average user? (Whomever that is.)

Oddly enough, it’s very hard to say - testimony to the very breadth and depth of the toolkit. The very first Acrobat users thought it was a prepress tool. For others, it was (and is!) a document assembly and distribution tool, or a scanning tool, or a platform for developing interactive PDF forms, or archiving documents, or commenting. There are many other equally dissimilar tasks in which some aspect of Acrobat is considered vital. “Swiss army knife” remains about the fairest overall description.

Perhaps the most important single change is the effort Adobe has put into helping newer users get more out of Acrobat than just the very basics. In Acrobat 8 most (but not all) of the tools got either a little or a lot better, depending mainly on what you need and how cleverly you use them.

That said, from my “knowledge worker” perspective, the single biggest new feature is the ability to “bless” PDFs using Acrobat Professional so the free Reader can save a user-filled form before printing or submitting it to a server.

> What are the most important new features for the vertical markets (e.g., government, manufacturing, legal, etc.) Does anything stand out in this regard?

Allowing Reader to save a form stands out in any context. Every industry uses forms, and extended this capability to Reader is BIG, without a doubt.

The legal community seems excited about redaction and bates-numbering (which surprised me, since excellent PDF redaction AND bates-numbering software from Appligent has been around for years), but government, publishers and others who want to make their PDF files more accessible (or PDF/A-1A compliant) won’t find substantially improved tagging tools in Acrobat 8.0.

Unlike Adobe, I don’t really believe traditional verticals are especially meaningful when it comes to PDF and Acrobat. There are many seemingly subtle enhancements in Acrobat 8 that offer immense opportunity for streamlining regular and ad-hoc work processes in many verticals. That’s because these are really document processes, not vertical processes.

Take the upgraded Combine Documents tool for example. Notice that this slick, easy tool now allows users to select and convert individual pages from different sources, preview the results and save that overall configuration for reuse. Workgroups large and small can continue to update documents individually, simply pushing the “easy button” in Acrobat 8 to combine all efforts together at the end of the day. Very cool. What vertical needs that? Any of them could really use it, and it’s only one such feature.

> Are there any often-requested features that aren’t in Acrobat 8? (i.e., What are the key missing pieces?)

While Extended Rights via Acrobat are great, the way they are implemented (and limited) in the EULA (End User License Agreement) makes little sense. Adobe has set a legal, financial and/or logistical cliff at the 500 user or 500 forms mark, depending. If LiveCycle is to meet the potential, Adobe needs to put (a lot) more attention into smoothing the transition from desktop to server-orientation in this area.

I was also quite disappointed to see very little improvement to the tagging tools. Ensuring that content semantics may be extracted from the document is a key aspect of making documents usable by those who must use assistive technologies to read. From accessibility to PDF/A to content reuse, automation and search-engine optimization, meaningful semantic tagging isn’t going away as an issue and there are a lot of corollary benefits to getting it right. Adobe needs to get going here.

I have to also say that it is well PAST high time that Adobe upgraded the JavaScript editor and made the power of JavaScript in PDF more accessible for the newer user, and less frustrating for the leathery Acrobat javascript gurus who can really make PDFs fly.

> Is Acrobat 8 a good value for new purchasers and upgraders?

Acrobat 8 Professional is an especially good value for new purchasers. While the application as a whole is very wide and deep, it is now laid out in a way that is fundamentally more approachable for new users. The new Combine Documents feature alone, if carefully studied and implemented, could deliver dramatic document-assembly benefits to distributed teams in almost every desk-bound organization.

Upgraders will find many improvements, even if the tonka-toy icons, unnecessary and lurid alerts and uber-prominent navigational panel cause distress. Adobe has yet to decide whether (or how) to trust Acrobat javascripters, putting a drag on the uptake of PDF in advanced forms and kiosk applications.

I was sufficiently intrigued by the Adobe Document Center to put it to the test with a real document distributed to a reasonably savvy group of people.

I’m one of those people who finds Flash more than a little overused. Once the initial buzz from the soft-focus feel of the all-Flash UI wore off, the Document Center did nothing to dispel this view.

Certainly, the process of adding new Policies and then applying them to documents was very easy. The Document Center doesn’t make it especially clear that applying Policies to documents is conducted from within Acrobat, which it is.  Create a Policy, go back to Acrobat, open your document and navigate to Advanced -> Security -> Manage Security Policies, login using your Adobe ID, select your Policy and save.  That’s it!

Less easy, as I went through version after version of my document, was retaining any meaningful picture of actual usage over time, one of the great Policy Server Promises.  I couldn’t delete revoked documents from the UI, or consolidate their statistics - perhaps that’s just a reporting issue, but it’s significant.  I also couldn’t group users, and I could never tell if or when the interface actually updated, and resorted to logging out and back in, which always seemed to do the trick. 

So, it’s a freebie interface for a freebie demo application, so I guess that’s OK.  I sure would hate to have to use it as a going concern, though.  Subtle hint.

I also found that my document recipients (and they are savvy, no kidding) were in a surprising number of cases quite stumped when confronted with a Policy Server protected document.  Part of this was due to a degree of reticence (or forgetfulness) in loyally signing up for Adobe IDs as is necessary for Adobe Document Center-protected documents.  Part of the problem was clearly also the cumbersome, Flash-heavy (why?!?) signup screen, which sapped enthusiasm further in at least two cases.  Worst, a disturbing number of reports (ie, more than 1) attested to the files consistently “crashing Acrobat”, which certainly wasn’t what anyone wants to hear.

So, I guess I have to report that thus far I’m not totally charmed, there are some definite rough-spots.  The Policy Server is undeniably an extraordinary concept, and I’d like to see much more of it. I certainly proved to my own satisfaction that I could flip a switch in Boston and watch my chosen file go “dark” all over the world, almost instantly, from Manila to Moscow.  For a second, lightning crackled between my fingertips as well.

Here’s hoping that Adobe will leave it in place past the end of the new year, or else limit freebie users to 2 protected documents at any given time… or something of the sort. Let the people kick the tires!

The ability to issue a truly embargoed document and then seamlessly (to prepared users, in any event) update it while simultaneously and effectively deleting all prior distributed copies is, quite simply, MAGIC.  Policy Server could be a real smash-hit if the execution, marketing and sales can be made to match, or even approach, the power of this product concept.

For those who do more with heavy technical reference tomes than merely prop open the window, you’ll be interested to know of Adobe’s latest opus; the (now) 30.9 MB, 1,310 page PDF Reference (and accompanying Errata and Redaction Addendum). 

When Adobe Systems originally decided to publish the PDF Reference, the document that describes in all significant detail the innards of PDF, was fairly manageable in scope.  With a few months dedicated effort, a reasonably competent development team could (in theory) build software to make simple PDFs every bit as good as PDFs made with Adobe’s own code.

Since then, many third-party developers have tried their hand at PDF creation, manipulation and management with a wide variety of results. The challenge of “keeping up with Adobe” has grown massively since initial publication of the Reference, and most 3rd party developers don’t try - many of the newer features in PDF are simply unnecessary for their applications. Thus far, anyhow, Adobe has seen itself honor-bound to respect PDF files meeting a very broad definition of “valid”, no matter how old (or creaky) they may be.

The PDF Reference 1.7, the “Acrobat 8 update”, is now available for free download from Adobe’s PDF Technology Center.

For those who yearn for maximum PDF power, Adobe has posted essential new reading in the latest JavaScript Reference for Acrobat 8.

As the brag states, Acrobat JavaScript “…implements objects, methods, and properties that enable you to manipulate PDF files, produce database-driven PDF files, modify the appearance of PDF files, and much more. You can tie Acrobat JavaScript code to a specific PDF document, a page, field, or button within that document, or a field or button within the PDF file, and even to a user action.”

As my colleague Thom has noted, Acrobat Javascript now supports ECMA-357. Now XML may occur natively in Acrobat JavaScript.

Those who develop with Acrobat, especially those who have used menu-item commands in their applications, will want to pay SPECIAL attention to this new version of the Reference. Already, some poor souls are finding out that things have changed in Acrobat 8, not necessarily to their advantage.

Those familiar with Acrobat JavaScript are strongly encouraged to begin by skipping to page 733, “New Features and Changes”.