Acrobat 8: View the document, not the application
In the coming weeks, we’ll be highlighting and explaining in greater detail some of the changes you can expect to find when Adobe Acrobat 8 begins shipping later this year. Already our select team of Acrobat-expert bloggers has shared a variety of first impressions within hours of the official announcement.
In my previous blog post, I mentioned the new “Getting Started” window that’s designed to introduce you to the new program and offer guidance on how to accomplish various tasks — some old, some new. No doubt there’s going to be a learning curve even for experienced users as to where some tools and functions now appear within the Acrobat menus. It’s a common experience that users don’t always realize that certain “wished-for” capabilities already exist within the program, and reshuffling the locations from version to version probably adds to that perception.
On the other hand, it creates more opportunities for personal “Eureka moments” when you discover a new tool or feature while looking for another. Even long-time users note such experiences, and Acrobat 8 will surely inspire similar enlightening encounters.
Something I mentioned in “First Look: Adobe Acrobat 8” is a significant difference in how Acrobat displays PDF files. Unlike reorganizing the location of certain tools, which is not blatantly obvious to the user at first glance, the new way Acrobat displays PDFs is anything but a subtle change — and it’s much for the better, seems to me, once you adjust to the new look.
For sake of comparison, the following illustration from the Acrobat 7 Help document shows that version’s work area.
The displayed PDF is almost engulfed by the application toolbars, How-To window, status bar and navigation pane. The PDF is alloted whatever space is left, which in this example, isn’t much.
Contrast that with how a PDF file — in this case, Adobe’s overview of Acrobat 8 — is displayed in Acrobat 8 Professional. Even when you open any of the associated panes indicated by the narrow strip of left-side icons, they open only to the left of the document rather than surround it.
Relatively speaking, you barely notice the application; instead, the document commands center stage. The latter approach seems far preferable.
Do you agree? Express your preference in the comment box below.
