Acro bytes by Kurt Foss

The Guardian newspaper in the UK launched a new PDF-based service on Friday aimed primarily at commuters — an A4-sized version that’s updated every 15 minutes and designed to be downloaded and printed. Users can choose print-and-read versions of the G24 service that focus on the day’s top stories, business, media, sport or world news.

According to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: “Increasingly, readers are demanding editorial content tailored to the time and place of their choosing, rather than to artificial deadlines dictated by old print production schedules.”

Anyone who’s been online for very long has likely spent a percentage of the time browsing and searching for information — with varying degrees of success. Sometimes in the process of seeking one thing you’ve probably stumbled across something else of equal or greater interest. And your searching success rises as you learn more about a particular search tool and how to maximize its effectiveness in various ways.

If Google is your preferred search tool — a widely popular choice by nearly any measure — you’ve probably only scratched the surface of what you can find and do with it. On the other hand, Philipp Lenssen has spent several years discovering and chronicling some of Google’s less-known, but often useful capabilities. Since 2003, his “Google Blogoscoped” blog has been a source of all things about the many ways to harness Google’s multidimensional search powers. While many of the “55 Ways to Have Fun With Google” featured in his book are more silly than serious, Lenssen says that “behind many of the playful creations surrounding that giant Google toy, there are serious lessons to be learned. Of the 55 ways to have fun with Google presented here, some ways indeed teach us something; about life, Google, and how to become a better searcher.”

A printed version of the book — self-described as a “cabinet of search engine curiosities, riddles, games, and a little bit of usefulness” — can be ordered online. But a PDF version is available as a free download.

Launch Acrobat or the free Adobe Reader and you’ll soon be on your way to learning more about Googlebombing, Googlewhacking, Egogoogling, Googledromes and many other search tool applications and adventures.

Earlier this month I posted a blog item related to a seemingly recurring problem that was frustrating some in the user community. The entry titled “Acrobat & Reader updates: Who’s in control?” mentioned that numerous forum and e-mail discussion list postings have indicated some annoying behavior centered around the way Acrobat and Reader automatically check for and download product updates by default. That can be changed in either program’s Preference settings so that updating is handled manually by the user rather than initiated — often at inopportune times — by the application itself.

There was another source of irritation in many of the complaints I’d been seeing that wasn’t really addressed by the Preference changes. Quite a few people were growing increasingly agitated because every time the update process was completed, the final step requested by the Adobe updater was a required reboot. But after the system was rebooted, the updater kicked in again … and some people reported getting stuck repeatedly in a time-wasting cycle.

Adobe recently posted a support document titled “Error ‘Need to reboot the computer’ after you run the Adobe Update Manager” that details several potential solutions to the overzealous rebooting:

• Solution 1: Remove the AUM transaction file
• Solution 2: Remove the Adobe Updater.exe key from the registry if it exists
• Solution 3: Search for and delete the AdobeUpdater.rbt file if it exists

Adobe’s Support Knowledgebase Document 332745 lists the steps for each.

Users can change Acrobat’s default Preferences settings to customize how PDF documents are displayed and magnified when opened. Some may prefer displaying a page at a time, others may prefer continuous facing pages, some may want to view at actual size while others could choose to make the PDF display in the visible space. Users can make changes to:

Acrobat > Preferences > Page Display

If you don’t assign and save specific display settings you want used in PDF files you create, different users may see different views when opening the same file on different computers. To override the Page Display settings in Preferences — in order to have a PDF file open consistently across different computers — go to:

Acrobat > File > Document Properties

Go to the Initial View tab, and under Magnification, choose Fit Width and then BE SURE to Save (or Save As) the PDF to assign the new view attributes to that file. It should always open now to that view.

You can also assign view attributes to the target of a specific link within the PDF file, either when you first create the link or when you later choose to edit the properties of an existing link. That’s the subject of a recent user-submitted question recently e-mailed to Lori DeFurio of Adobe Systems. Lori solicits and answers user questions related to Acrobat and PDF in Lori’s Corner, one of the Tech Corners areas within AcrobatUsers.com. Read her answer to “How do I set the size of a page with a link?” and to other recent queries. Or send her a question of your own!

We’ve only recently launched a selection of site-related blogs authored by some very well-known members of the Acrobat and PDF community. According to a recent report profiling the blogosphere, that includes us in the 12 million or so American adults who now keep a blog. And if you’re reading this, it puts you in the company of some 57 million Americans who told researchers with the Pew Internet & American Life Project that they read blogs.

Analysis of the findings of the report titled “Bloggers: A portrait of the Internet’s new storytellers” have been popping up in traditional media websites and, of course, in numerous blog postings. Rather than rehash and repeat summaries here, the more relevant and noteworthy perspective is a look at the available-for-downloading PDF version of the report.

Yesterday’s post referenced a peeve from another website about online PDFs that do not provide built-in navigation, making it easy for a reader to quickly access key areas of content within a document. That’s definitely not the case with the Pew report.

Although the file doesn’t open with bookmarks displayed, if you manually open the Bookmarks pane, you’re generously rewarded with a wealth of detailed bookmarks — complete, meaningful sentences — that link to key findings throughout the 33-page report. Note: If the lengthy bookmarks are difficult to read without expanding the width of the Bookmarks pane, there’s an option to “Wrap Long Bookmarks” in the Options drop-down menu.

It’s a great example of how to use (one of) the available navigational tools in Acrobat to enhance a document and to make it easy for users to digest.

For the past several versions, each evolution of Acrobat has added greater flexibility in and diverse methods of protecting PDF files. One of the latest options involves the use of security policies — default or user-defined settings that specify authorized users, allow or disable specific access rights (such as printing, copying and commenting), set time restrictions and so on — designed to control documents post-distribution.

However, the ability to take full advantage of security policies has been limited to those with access to an Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server (APS). With the recent launch by Adobe Systems of a public beta for a new online service, users — with or without Acrobat — can test drive the functionality of APS.

“Protect an Adobe PDF” (PAPDF) is a complement to the “Create Adobe PDF Online” subscription service that Adobe has offered for several years. After an initial test period with subscribers, Adobe is now broadening the new security policy service to a public beta test. For the duration of the trial period, users can create a free trial account.

After logging in, you choose between protecting a PDF using a default policy or first creating a new one. A third option for users of Acrobat 7 (Standard, Professional or Acrobat 3D) is to configure Acrobat to protect PDF files directly from the desktop by accessing the policies available through the PAPDF service’s Policy Server.

Creating a new policy is a simple, form-based process — enter a policy name and e-mail addresses for the users you want to be authorized for document access, set file permissions via a short set of checkboxes and last, specify how long the protected documents can be accessed. After saving the policy, it’s available for immediate use.

Protecting a PDF through the online service is likewise simple. Using another short online form, you upload a PDF file, choose a security policy and click the Protect button. The file is immediately uploaded to the PAPDF server, the protection is applied and the secure file is sent back via e-mail to your registered e-mail address. The attachment includes an electronic wrapper that tells authorized users to whom you send the file how they can access it. When they attempt to open the attached file, they get a dialogue popup requesting a registered Adobe ID and password. The end user must be authenticated by the service before access to the file is allowed. You can specify up to 300 unique users in a policy.

The process of configuring Acrobat to view and apply policies from the desktop is explained in a brief tutorial. You log in with your Adobe ID and password and make the PAPDF server your default server for storing and retrieving your policies.

A second set of instructions walks you through the process of applying policies from within your properly configured copy of Acrobat. In short, with a PDF file open, go to:

Acrobat > Document > Security > Secure this document

The Select a Policy to Apply dialog opens, listing all currently available security policies — including any you created. Choose a policy, then click Apply to log in and connect to the PAPDF server to register your protected PDF file. Save the file to apply the selected policy.

While the PAPDF beta service takes advantage of Acrobat 7-level functionality, the current subscription service for creating PDF files is still based on Acrobat 5. However, Adobe has plans “to upgrade Create Adobe PDF Online to leverage our LiveCycle 7 technology,” according to Patrice Lagrange of Adobe Systems.

According to Lagrange, the target market for the new PAPDF service is “knowledge workers — sales, marketing, engineering, finance/IT — in small businesses, since they might not have the resources to deploy enterprise LiveCycle solutions.”

About a year ago, the MAKE website began distributing sample PDF-based eBooks via Apple’s iTunes service, testing its viability for commercial, small-scale publishing.

Published quarterly by O’Reilly and available in both print and digital editions, MAKE describes itself as a “new hybrid magazine/book” — aka a “mook” — that in each issue “celebrates your right to tweak, hack and bend any technology to your own will.” It includes do-it-yourself projects that range from the clearly useful to others that scream ‘for-geeks-only.’

Falling somewhere between those two endpoints is MAKE’s latest PDF-based project delivered through a free subscription to the site’s podcast, including a video for iPod viewing: Illustrated instructions detailing how to “Make a Wallet Out of [Gaffer or Duct] Tape.”

For those who take up this or any of its other techno-crafts challenges, MAKE invites people to upload and share images of their creations on flickr.

While the public buzz around eBooks seems to have faded somewhat in the past year or two — still some technological issues to be sorted out before they catch on more widely, many say — there’s still a considerable amount of activity going on to keep things moving forward.

Proof of that is currently visible at the website of the World eBook Fair, the “largest showcase for eBooks, eBook publishers, editors and others working in the new world of eBooks.” From July 4 to August 4, the site is offering free public access to its varied collections, offering downloads from among its 330,000-plus PDF-based eBook titles in more than 100 languages. According to the site, it’s being done in celebration of the 35th birthday of Project Gutenberg, the oldest and largest free eBook source on the Internet. During this month-long event, the normal $8.95 annual membership fee for online access is being waived.

You can conduct a full-text search of or browse the assorted collections that make up the World eBook Library Consortia showcase site.

One advantage of a PDF-based eBook is that you can have Acrobat (or the free Adobe Reader) read it to you:

Acrobat > View > Read Out Loud

Granted, a computerized voice may not be ideally suited to the task, since it doesn’t comprehend what it’s reading and therefore can’t add the proper inflections, pacing, emphasis and so on. That shortcoming aside, if you do want to try out that capability, here’s this week’s third reminder on the use of the Preferences settings: Both Acrobat and Reader use the “Agnes” voice by default, but this can be changed here:

Acrobat (or Reader) > Preferences > Reading

Simply uncheck the Use default voice box and select another of the options under the Voice popup list. Experiment to see which you find the easiest to understand.

Yesterday’s post offered a reminder that Acrobat provides a way for users to choose whether they want product updates to be tracked and downloaded automatically or handled manually. It’s one of the almost 30 categories available in Acrobat’s Preferences. See:

Acrobat > Preferences

It’s probably fair to assume that a lot of users install Acrobat and begin using it without reviewing the myriad options available within the various Preferences categories for fine-tuning different features and aspects of the program. And then there’s another group that may have opened the Preferences pane and navigated through some of the categories, only to be perplexed by the many possible choices or unsure of the value and impact of making certain changes. To a large degree, it’s a trial-and-error process.

In his “Acrobat for Legal Professionals” blog on Adobe.com, Rick Borstein, a Business Development Manager specializing in the Acrobat-Legal Market for Adobe Systems, offered an assessment of some of the more useful Preference settings changes. In a May blog posting titled “Acrobat Preferences: My Personal Favorites,” Borstein walks through a selection of the categories, noting and explaining a few options others might want to consider. For example, he shares his reasoning for changing some of the default settings in the “Convert to PDF” category that he says can reduce the file size by 40 to 80 percent when converting a TIFF file to PDF.

Once you get started making a few Preference settings changes, you’ll likely want to take a closer look at some of the other ways you can tailor Acrobat to your own needs and uses. And you’ll likely expand your understanding of the program in the process.

As you might expect, I routinely monitor a number of forums, e-mail discussion lists and blogs dealing primarily with Adobe Acrobat, Reader and PDF to keep in touch with topics that — for better or worse — are on the minds of users.

One of the recent themes I’ve been noticing has to do with recent updates for both the commercial and free software products — Adobe recently posted patches to update both programs to version 7.0.8. A number of user postings I’ve browsed indicate a range of problems and frustrations, from failed installations (especially with Reader) to freezing on relaunch to related functionality problems with specific Web browsers and/or OS versions.

When you’re the one dealing with such a predicament, the myriad possible causes can seem like a potential troubleshooting nightmare and lead to exasperation — especially when such glitches always seem to arise at the most inopportune time. Most users eventually discover workarounds or solutions from others in the online community or, in some cases, from subsequently released tech-support documents.

You can’t help but empathize with the victimized, most who suffer temporary setbacks through no fault or action of their own. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong DLL or whatever the cause, the experience can lead to rants against the products or the company — or both.

In some of the recent soundoffs, a number of people point to the software-updating process itself as being the cause of considerable consternation. One particularly colorful blog posting called Acrobat the “screaming child of software” after it suddenly launched the updater and then proceeded — obviously against the user’s desire at the moment — to download and install the detected updates. In his case, it apparently went through the process twice, only adding to his displeasure and fueling his desire to foment additional public backlash.

Again, we can all empathize to a point with the feeling that his “desktop was hijacked” because “Adobe decided” the time was right to update Acrobat (after the user had clicked on a PDF file link). He writes that the real issue isn’t the frequency of the Acrobat updates, but rather “it’s about who is in control.”

Alas, there’s a key difference between the matter of a failed update installation and the latter matter in which the user suggests that “Adobe [Acrobat or Reader] chooses to update itself.” Let’s have a look.

Depending on which program you have installed, go to either:

Acrobat > Preferences > Updates

or

Reader > Preferences > Updates

and review the options for how each program handles updating. The user can opt for one of three choices, including “Do not automatically check for critical updates.”

The Preferences window also explains that if you disable automatic checking, you can handle the process manually at a time of your choosing, as follows:

Help > Check for updates now

Both Acrobat and Reader provide this option, putting the control of the updating process where it belongs — protestations to the contrary — in the hands of the user.