Acro bytes by Kurt Foss

The global community of Acrobat and PDF users includes people at all skill levels and with varied interests and applications. There are so many potential uses for the software and file format, and Acrobat is so rich and deep in features that most disciples never come close to even using — much less mastering — many of the capabilities.

At the high-end of the experience pyramid is the subset of people who have become expert users, but that expertise typically covers only a particular application or set of tools rather than the full range. At events like the recent Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference in Minneapolis, that segmentation can be seen in the topical sessions and the different expert speakers for each. Experts can be masters of a particular domain — i.e. PDF for high-end printing — and yet only have an average grasp of another common use — i.e. creating and managing forms.

Even at the high end of the expertise food chain, however, there is an even smaller number who other Acrobat and PDF experts look to — often in adoration, sometimes in awe — as being the ultimate source of knowledge in a particular area. I saw and heard that several times during the two days in Minneapolis last month.

Now you have the opportunity to tap into the wisdom of one of those bona fide gurus at a new website he and his company have just launched.

At the Minneapolis event (as I’ve also witnessed at similar events in the past), I heard several of the other expert speakers publicly offer debts of gratitude for past assistance to Thom Parker of Windjack Solutions — and now also of pdfscripting.com. He’s become pretty much the gold standard for knowledge about how to use JavaScript and Acrobat to take PDF to another level. To those with little or no knowledge of the stuff he routinely does behind the scenes with JavaScript to make PDFs “come alive,” the end results can often seem a bit magical. That includes ways, as explained on the Windjack Solutions’ website, “to add powerful functionality to PDF documents and forms, to automate Acrobat and PDF workflows, and to make PDF forms more end-user friendly.”

With the launch of the new subscription-based pdfscripting.com site, others interested in tapping into Thom’s accumulated knowledgebase now can do so for a pretty modest annual fee. Where there’s been a relative dearth of information for years for people interested in learning about Acrobat and JavaScript, there’s now a veritable fountain of knowledge.

For a limited time, a one-year membership including full access to all resources is $99 USD. Members of the site have immediate access to more than seven hours of in-depth video tutorials covering the basics of Acrobat and PDF scripting; a copy-n-paste script library of ready-to-use or easily customizable scripts for common tasks in PDF documents and forms; a download library of sample PDF files that include beginner, intermediate and advanced scripts for use in projects; and a library of automation tools for Acrobat.

There’s a range of free content on the site for those who want to try before they buy. There’s also ample evidence on AcrobatUsers.com, where he’s been the driving force behind most of the Acrobat JavaScript content — including a recent eSeminar and numerous tutorials, and very active in related forum discussions.

“In addition to the content available now, a big advantage to offering this type of learning resource is we have the ability to continually add new content, and our plan is to be very aggressive in doing that for our members,” said Dimitri Munkirs, VP of WindJack Solutions. “We have been asked with higher frequency over the last couple years to write a book on Acrobat JavaScript or develop a training CD. With pdfscripting.com, we’ve created a more dynamic learning environment than you get with a paper book or CD.”

I mentioned in my last blog post from Minneapolis (now back at the home office in Madison, WI) that registrants to last week’s Acrobat & PDF Central Conference were provided with a flash drive containing the bulk of the speaker presentations — in the form of a very nifty PDF Portfolio file, created with Adobe Acrobat 9. Of course, a few speakers were  still tweaking their presentations on site and thus didn’t submit them in time to be included in the first version. Individual presentations were made available for download from the conference site during the event, but not the compilation file.

Dustin Tauer, Vice President of Training and Development at Easel Solutions, hosts of the conference, has since updated the PDF Portfolio to include several additional presentations. The file is now also posted for download from the conference homepage. Here’s the direct link to the 39 MB PDF Portfolio file. You’ll need Adobe Reader 9 or Adobe Acrobat 9 to take full advantage of the new feature, which was one of the most popular at the conference. You’ll know why when you see this great example.

In addition, the two keynote webcasts from the conference — first broadcast live last Wednesday and Thursday — are now posted for on-demand viewing:

Day 1: Interactive Workflow with Acrobat 9 and Acrobat.com, presented by Ali Hanyaloglu [the audio dropped out a couple times during the talk, so forward the presentation]

Day 2: AcroForms and LiveCycle Designer Forms, presented by Ted Padova and Angie Okamoto

A final reminder that next year’s event is again slated for Minneapolis — on September 22-24, 2009.

The now-concluded Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference in Minneapolis not only offered attendees useful information about the varied applications of Adobe Acrobat & PDF, but sent them home with a great example of event organizers practicing what they preach.

Many sessions included references to and demonstrations of some of the new Acrobat 9 features — among them the PDF Portfolio capability that is an enhancement of the PDF Packages feature introduced in Acrobat 8. The conference website offers most of the speaker presentations  as individual downloads, a process that requires a lot of manual effort and results in a folder/directory of seemingly unrelated files — in a variety of file types — with uncertain content (judgments often based on cryptic filenames).

To save them the effort, registered attendees were each provided with a flash drive containing all of the available presentations. Better than the download-time savings, what the conference audience found on the drives was not an assorted collection of files, but rather a single, organized PDF Portfolio containing all of the presentations, complete with detailed descriptions of the content of each session.

It gave attendees an opportunity to actually experience some of the benefits that they heard discussed in many of the sessions, and likely intrigued a number of them to want to create similar PDF Portfolios of their own for their respective companies or organizations.

You can find other sources of inspiration in our PDF Portfolio Gallery on AcrobatUsers.com. And if you create something you’re proud of and are willing to share with our community, you could submit it in our Acrobat 9 PDF Portfolios contest — the fast-approaching deadline is October 7.

Another date to put on the calendar is next year’s Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference: September 22-24, 2009 in Minneapolis. Kudos to the Easel Solutions staff who organized this year’s great event!

At the tail end of the Thursday morning keynote presentation at the Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference, the microphone was passed to Duff Johnson of Document Solutions, Inc., to make a brief announcement. Johnson, with a widely respected expertise in PDF conversion, document scanning and management, PDF standards and compliance, and accessibility, is one of the handful of expert speakers at the Minneapolis event.

He officially announced to conference attendees what he’d already revealed a day earlier in an e-mailed news release (and in retrospect, by his conspicuous presence in the Appligent trade show booth here earlier in the day) and in his PDF Perspectives blog at AcrobatUsers.com, and which we discussed a bit further during breakfast at nearby (and highly recommended) Hell’s Kitchen this morning: His company is merging with Appligent, another well-regarded, long-time vendor in the Acrobat and PDF marketplace. Based in Pennsylvania, Appligent has a solid reputation within the PDF ecosystem, offering a range of products and services. The new company — for which Johnson becomes CEO — will be called Appligent Document Solutions; he will remain based in the Boston area. Appligent’s Virginia Gavin will be the President and Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Mark Gavin will be the Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

At this week’s conference, Johnson is leading breakout sessions on “PDF Meets Accessibility and Section 508″ and “PDF as Rapid Application Development Platform.”

Full details of the merger are available in a posted news release. [PDF: 130 kb]

People come to conferences such as this week’s Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference in Minneapolis for different reasons, but a common one is the desire to find answers to product-related questions. And there’s ample opportunity to mingle with the expert speakers and other attendees over the course of the two-day event to do just that.

However, as became clear during the keynote address this morning that was being webcast live to a global audience, it’s sometimes easier to ask those questions that pop into your head when listening to a presentation when logged in rather than being physically present in the same room with the speakers. By my count, during this morning’s joint keynote by Ted Padova and Angie Okamoto titled “Differences between Acrobat Forms and LiveCycle Designer Forms,” virtual attendees received answers to more than 25 questions typed into the chatpod in Acrobat Connect during the one-hour session. In contrast, there was time at the end of the keynote for only one person in the room to ask a question.

The session itself was set up as good-natured sparring between Phillipines-based Ted & Nebraska-based Angie over the respective pros and cons of creating PDF forms with either Adobe Acrobat or with the free-standing (and Windows-only) LiveCycle Designer software. In reality, the two speakers are anything but combatants; rather, they’re just completing the task of  co-authoring a book due out in December — PDF Forms Using Acrobat & LiveCycle Designer Bible. But for the sake of the session, they continually challenged each other’s preferred tool (Ted/Acrobat vs. Angie/Designer), pointing out the perceived advantages of their favorite forms-creation tool.

While the on-site audience sat listening in the darkened room, the online attendees were busy typing questions, chattering about which speaker they agreed with or relating their own preferences or needs. Both Ali Hanyaloglu and Lori DeFurio of Adobe Systems were logged in and quickly responding to virtual queries. Granted, many of the typed Q&A exchanges were brief in nature, such as:

Larry Powell:  ”Designer work on a Mac?”

Ali Hanyaloglu: “No Designer for Mac, Windows only. But forms created with Designer work on the Mac.”

Another response provided an active link for easy exploration:

Karen G: ”Radio Buttons are a challenge to get in tabbing order in Designer. Is that being addressed in newer editions?”

Lori DeFurio: “Designer 8.2 has a new palette for tab order - if you want to try it - http://www.adobe.com/tryacrobat will give you Acrobat 9 + Designer 8.2.”

Sometimes the online exchanges were more entertaining than instructive, reflecting on perceptions gleaned from the webcast audio:

Susan Peirce: “Ted is louder than Angie. Can you change that?”

Ali Hanyaloglu: “They are sharing a microphone. Ted is louder than Angie most of the time ”

Predictably the session ended in a draw, with the expert speakers agreeing that neither Acrobat or Designer is the best choice for all forms needs and authoring circumstances. Anyone designing forms on a regular basis really needs to use both, and to understand the key features and limitations of each, they concluded.

Likewise, it seems clear from a pair of hybrid experiences the past two days — attending the conference keynotes in person and online simultaneously — there are ways they can overlap to enhance the user experience. Each has certain shortcomings, but finding ways to integrate them can both expand the audience and provide for greater opportunity to ask questions and get answers from a broader range of experts–who may or may not attending the conference in person.

You can download today’s keynote presentation [PDF: 2.7 MB ] to see the outlined advantages and disadvantages of Acrobat vs. Designer. However, the chatpod is now closed and the speakers are giving other sessions (as I write this). But you can always take your questions to the respective forms forums at AcrobatUsers.com.

While I’m on the subject of online educational opportunities and forms, the free eSeminar at AcrobatUsers.com for next month is on “Basic Fillable Forms and Form Tracking,” scheduled for Wednesday, October 15 at 10 a.m. US Pacific.

I hadn’t really stopped to think that it’s been more than 20 years since I lived and worked here in Minneapolis. But in riding the city’s light-rail train from the southern suburbs to downtown in less than 30 minutes today, I sampled for the first time one of the new (and very nice) transportation options that didn’t exist in 1987.

Soon thereafter during the opening morning keynote address by Ali Hanyaloglu, Acrobat product evangelist at Adobe Systems, I experienced this conference in a way that was in at least one high-tech way different from the many other Acrobat-oriented gatherings I’ve attended since the product’s earliest versions shipped.

Given the changing times, the 200 or so registered attendees seems an adequate turnout for such an event. Not all were in the main ballroom this morning as Ali was making a final test of the microphone and computer hookup for his upcoming presentation on “Interactive Workflow: Acrobat 9 and Acrobat.com.”

He immediately noted to those physically present that we were being joined by a group of 150 or so virtual attendees, logging in live via Web browsers from across the country, as well as from more distant places such as Trinidad, Brazil and Australia. If so, then Ali’s online audience exceeded the one scattered across circular tables in front of him.

So even though I was watching Ali in person, I simultaneously accessed the online version of the presentation in order to follow along — a sort of hybrid-viewing experience — to get a firsthand feel for the pros and cons of each. I didn’t notice, but I suspect there were a few others in the room who might have been doing the same thing (and thus slightly skewing the virtual attendee numbers!).

There proved to be benefits and shortcomings from the differing vantage points. During a live demonstration where Ali showed how to do live sharing by connecting to and collaborating with a remote colleague, only the online audience could actually view the two screens side-by-side being controlled by either party. However, it wasn’t always smooth sailing online. Seated behind me, Thom Parker took an urgent cellphone call from Lori DeFurio of Adobe Systems, who was part of the virtual community. She said the live audio had suddenly dropped off for the online attendees. It was quickly restored, but they unfortunately missed some of Ali’s informative overview of the new PDF Portfolios feature in Acrobat 9.

The audio glitch aside, it was interesting that when Ali posed several questions to people in the room asking for a show of hands, the online folks also had an option in Acrobat Connect to “Raise Hand” (and several other feedback options)–and many did.

Only the two morning keynotes–another to open tomorrow’s final day–are being webcast live (and subsequently posted for on-demand viewing). But many of the other speakers have already made copies of their presentations and/or related resource files available for download from the Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference website. Check back later to get additional speaker presentations.

If it’s Wednesday, this must be Minneapolis–at least for those of us attending the Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference being held at the downtown convention center. I’ll be jumping on the light-rail train shortly to get from my suburban hotel to the site, and then will blog throughout the day–at the whim of the available Internet connection.

If you’re not here, you can still partake of this morning’s opening keynote presentation–just log in at 8:30 a.m. US Central to view the session live. Ditto for tomorrow morning’s second keynote. See details in last week’s blog postings.

More to come from Minneapolis soon!

If you missed yesterday’s live, one-hour eSeminar from AcrobatUsers.com on PDF & Flash — led by Ali Hanyaloglu of Adobe Systems — the on-demand version has now been posted.

You won’t be able to ask questions like those who attended the live session were able to do, but you can view Ali’s complete presentation and demonstrations, and download a pair of related PDFs. And if you do have questions on this topic, you can always post them in the Rich Media/Flash forum.

Further proof that PDF is not just for printing anymore (actually, it hasn’t been for some time, but Acrobat 9 takes the concept and reality of rich-media PDFs to another level) can be found at next week’s Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference 2008 in Minneapolis, there will be a hands-on session on PDF & Flash led by Dustin Tauer of Easel Solutions, and a related talk on Dynamic Media in Electronic Publications by Bob Connolly of pdfPictures. See other recent blog posts for more about the upcoming conference.

Looking ahead, it’s not too early to register for next month’s free eSeminar on Basic Fillable Forms and Form Tracking, scheduled for Wednesday, October 15 at 10 a.m. U.S. Pacific.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ll be posting live to this blog for several days next week from the Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference 2008 in Minneapolis, providing one way for those unable to make the trip to glean highlights from some of the expert-led sessions. But wait — there’s more!

You will also be able to watch the daily keynote presentations on both 9/24 and 9/25 live online via Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. Tune in with your Web browser at the appointed time [convert to your local timezone, if necessary] next Wednesday and Thursday to see:

• Wed., Sept. 24, 8:30-9:30 a.m. (US Central)
“Interactive Workflow: Acrobat 9 and Acrobat.com”
Speaker: Ali Hanyaloglu of Adobe Systems

Description: If you are expected to do less, in more time, with unlimited resources, then you are one very fortunate person. For most of us, it is the complete opposite. So how can you produce a truly compelling document quickly, with input from many individuals, without having to utilize expensive resources that you may not even have? Desktop software and online hosted services come together beautifully in this situation, and this presentation will walk you through a “day-in-the-life” of working on and completing a valuable document using Acrobat 9 and Acrobat.com.

• Thu., Sept. 25, 8:30-9:30 a.m. (US Central)
“Differences Between Acrobat Forms and LiveCycle Forms”
Speakers: Ted Padova & Angie Okamoto

Description: Uncover the differences between AcroForms and Designer Forms. Before you start your form-creating process, you need to decide which is the correct product for your needs. Learn the important differences between AcroForms and Designer Forms.

Both sessions will be available online on the respective dates at http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/pdfcentral2008.

One week from today the Adobe Acrobat & PDF Central Conference 2008 will open in downtown Minneapolis, MN with a kickoff  reception for registered attendees, followed by two days of expert-led sessions on all aspects of Acrobat and PDF usage.

Accordingly, I’m heading back to the not-so-twin city — considerably different from neighboring St. Paul in many respects, as any local can tell you — where I lived and worked for a dozen years. I’ll be providing live blog coverage for AcrobatUsers.com from a cross-section of the main conference sessions on September 24 and 25.

I’ll try to briefly report on as many of the topical sessions as I can manage to sample, sharing tidbits from the cast of well-regarded speakers, many whom I know and have learned from at previous conferences that showcased earlier versions of Acrobat, going back to its earliest days.

A key focus next week, of course, will be Acrobat 9.0, including sessions on PDF Portfolios, Flash & PDF, and the related Acrobat.com online services.

It’s not too late to register for the conference. Registered AUC members can get a $300 discount on the main conference fee. There are also several day-long pre-conference sessions next Tuesday, led by Ted Padova, Thom Parker and Angie Okamoto — each session has a separate fee and covers a specific topic.

But if you can’t make it to Minneapolis next week, I’ll do my best to share some highlights from the event with you here, beginning next Tuesday!