Acro bytes by Kurt Foss

The Windows version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional includes an update to Adobe LiveCycle Designer. The Adobe LiveCycle Developer Center includes an article that summarizes the key new features in the product.

But it’s not always the more widely hyped new features that may prove the most useful, as Stefan Cameron points out in his Adobe.com-based FormBuilder blog. Cameron notes in his post titled “Little Things Matter” that “some of the smaller things … can sometimes be just as beneficial.” He goes on to summarize and illustrate a number of the smaller, but meaningful touches in Designer 8 that “may seem insignificant, but when you add them all together, they can make a significant impact.”

In our latest interview with a member of the Acrobat team at Adobe, I talked recently with Heather Winkle, manager of the User Experience Group that developed and implemented the new streamlined user interface (UI) in the Acrobat 8 product line.

Heather talked about the goals and challenges of the makeover process.

“The Acrobat interface was extremely complicated,” she says. “Bits and pieces had been added on over time–you saw lots of different types of toolbars, statusbars, panels, panes and floating palettes. And the menu system clearly had been developed by every future team individually, with nobody going through and saying ‘what’s the pattern behind this,’ ‘what’s the rationale for different placement,’ and so on. You could really see the history in it. It needed someone to come in and take a look at it with a fresh perspective—to ask ‘what’s the framework,’ ‘what’s the logic behind where everything is placed,’ ‘does everything on the UI have a purpose and if it doesn’t, why is it there,’ and ‘can we remove a number of lines and pixels and stuff that’s getting in the way of what people really want to do, which is work with a document.’”

Of course, long-time users of Acrobat will need to discover where some menus, tools and features have been relocated in the new version. One example is the top-level menu structure for the Advanced section, comparing Acrobat 7 Professional (top) with Acrobat 8 Professional (bottom).

To aid in the rediscovery process, the User Experience team provided an illustrated chart–available for download–that summarizes the menu structure changes from version 7.0.8 to 8.0.

If you have a comment or question about the new Acrobat 8 UI, please add it in the “Leave a Reply” area below!

Our user community colleague Chris Converse, the esteemed webmeister of AcrobatUsers.com, has been on the go lately as part of the traveling cast of Adobe’s Acrobat 8 roadshow. (They’re in Irvine today and then San Francisco on Nov. 30, with a final Dec. 4 event in New York.)

And speaking of online communities, arguably one of the hottest these days is YouTube.com–recently purchased by Google–self-described as a “community that is highly motivated to watch and share videos.” LOTS of them, on a wide range of topics and interests. Granted, a good deal of the viewable content is there not because of its technical quality or significant informational value, but rather because YouTube provides a virtual space where it’s easy for people of all skill levels to upload their original videos. (YouTube recently had to remove a slew of copyrighted video clips that were posted by users without permission.)

If you’re an Acrobat enthusiast who spends time on YouTube, you should check out the five-minute video tour of the Acrobat 8 interface that Chris posted there yesterday.

It’s considerably more useful than, say, “Cat gone MAD!!!“

With a new version of Adobe Acrobat–and soon the free Adobe Reader–shipping and being downloaded, updated versions of some common user-support questions are appearing. One of the most frequently posed: ‘Can I install Acrobat 8 and also keep an earlier version on the same computer?’

Adobe’s Support Knowledgebase now provides a variety of updated and some new answers and solutions for users of the new, enhanced product.

Technical Document #333223 addresses the multiple-version issue:

“Although you can install Adobe Acrobat 8.0.x on a computer that contains an installation of previous Acrobat versions, it is not recommended. Acrobat 8.0.x Professional and Acrobat 8.0.x Standard use the Acrobat 8.0.x version of PDFMaker and Adobe PDF printer. When two or more versions of Acrobat are installed on the same computer, removing one version of Acrobat may disable functionality.”

And regarding the order of whether to install, then remove an older version–Acrobat or Reader–or vice versa, the tech support advisory suggests:

“Removing previous versions of Acrobat or Adobe Reader after you install a more recent version can disable functionality. Repair the current version of Acrobat after removing the previous version. If the repair process does not restore all functionality, reinstall the current version.”

Of special note is a lengthy chart on version interoperability included in the recently posted Knowledgebase document, which “shows what will happen if you install Adobe Acrobat 8.0.x when the computer already has Acrobat or Adobe Reader installed.” See the excerpt below; other versions and products are covered in the support document.

Newspaper circulation in the U.S. continues to decline, and increasingly fewer American cities offer competing daily newspapers. But in Canada, as the Ottawa Business Journal reports, the newspaper wars among the three local dailies in the country’s capital city have been reignited.

The latest volley came from the Ottawa Citizen, a morning newspaper which yesterday launched “RushHour,” a free-to-download, 12-page PDF edition published as an “afternoon news update and evening entertainment guide” from Monday to Friday. The Citizen promotes the ad-supported RushHour as follows: “Read it on the screen in full colour, or print it, roll it up and take it with you on the trip home.”

And for its ink-addicted readers, there will also be a free print version available at 120 Ottawa locations, the newspaper says.

If you’re among the early adopters of Acrobat 8, you’re probably busy exploring the new, streamlined user interface. And if you’ve been using a previous version, no doubt you’ll be spending a little time making sure you know where some features, tools and menus are located as a result of the UI makeover.

One area within Acrobat 8 that isn’t likely to get a lot of user attention is the listing of credits, found under ‘About Acrobat.’ The scrollable fine print acknowledges the Acrobat team members who’ve contributed to the development of the new version, including individuals from engineering, user interface, marketing and business management, product management and other internal working groups.

Rather than extolling the product’s virtues, today I want to draw your attention to this seldom-seen list of credits–and to one particular name out of the many. Listed among the product management group staff is Chris Gulker, a team member I’ve known and whose work I’ve respected–and learned much from–during the past couple of decades.

While his Acrobat team colleagues are now looking ahead to new challenges as the product has begun shipping, I learned only yesterday that Chris is at home facing a different type of challenge. He was recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor (grade 3 glioma). I know he’s home (following a brain biopsy prior to chemotherapy) because he’s sharing details of his spiritual and medical treatments–including a Magnetic Resonance Image of his brain showing the tumor–on his personal blog at www.gulker.com, one that he started in 1995 before anyone was using the term. Chris was ahead of the wave with blogging, as he has been with many other of his numerous technological feats and achievements in his diverse, interesting career.

Chris and I both came to the worlds of technology and software from backgrounds in journalism and news photography, and our paths crossed numerous times. In the early 1990s, we linked up and travelled to Australia and New Zealand together to participate in several digital imaging and publishing workshops sponsored by a large Pacific Area newspaper publishing organization. We were also both part of a “Virtual Newsroom” team that used early digital cameras, film scanners and related desktop publishing tools to cover and distribute photographs digitally from a trailer at the 1992 Super Bowl in Minneapolis.

Chris was also an early Acrobat and PDF user. Working as a photojournalist in Los Angeles, he published an experimental “retrospective photo book” [PDF:693kb] in 1995 and made his electronic portfolio available for download on the Web. He told me recently that more than a decade later, it’s still getting 8-10 daily downloads.

He was subsequently hired by the Hearst organization in San Francisco–where journalists were still using typewriters at the time–to help the Examiner explore how newspapers could harness and publish on the Internet. His boss, Will Hearst, explained that the WWW made it possible for an individual to set up his or her own website as a personal printing press–using www.gulker.com as a hypothetical example–and even to potentially compete with traditional newspapers. Chris jumped on the idea and the Internet that same day, launching Gulker.com in 1995. He’s been blogging regularly since then, right up to and including this week’s biopsy and return home. (And as you might imagine, the quality of photography is considerably higher than at the typical blog.)

After driving the launch of and managing the Electronic Examiner, one of the first online newspapers in the U.S., Chris left the world of traditional journalism. He joined Apple Computer as a publishing markets director and then later worked on a couple of small Silicon Valley start-up businesses. In 2004, he joined Adobe–first to work on its since-discontinued Atmosphere, later switching to the Acrobat product management team, where he’s been primarily focused on forms, accessibility, product internationalization and Mac OS X-related issues.

One of his most recent personal productivity experiments “to see what a full digital life is like” involved setting up a scanner and Acrobat as part of a solution to convert, index, manage and archive all of the typical documents he routinely deals with–articles, reports, invoices, receipts and so on. Of course, he’s been blogging about The Paperless Project, too.

Harsh reality intervened in mid-October, as he recounts in a separate blog area, with a frightening incident at work:

“Sitting in my office at Adobe, in San Jose, I had just finished typing a document and was reaching for the phone to call a colleague when my left arm suddenly convulsed into a painful contraction that froze it, every muscle tightly clenched and curled up against my chest. Wild contractions began to flow up and down the arm.

Completely nonplussed, and absolutely at a loss to figure out what was going on, I slid to my knees and crawled to the corridor and said ‘Help.’ Three colleagues appeared, 2 headed for the phone and one came and tried to calm me down. By now I was hyperventilating and completely freaked out.”

Luckily, paramedics arrived and he was whisked away for evaluation. The brain tumor diagnosis soon followed. With it came much soul-searching and necessary lifestyle changes. Chris was able to set up a home-based office to continue his Adobe work for a while. Acrobat Connect became an invaluable tool, he says, for arranging and conducting personal meetings. But following the biopsy earlier this week, Chris now faces six weeks of daily radiation treatments, with plans to return to work in 2007.

We’ll be watching Gulker.com for good news about the treatment and recovery of a true technology visionary–and a friend. He said in a brief e-mail message today that “we have every intention of getting through this and right back on Acrobat.”

Like all of the Adobe staff listed in the Acrobat 8 credits, we very much look forward to–and will be cheering for–that day.

Best to you, Chris, and to wife Linda and the family!

A day after a big news day seems a good time to mention a PDF-rich website that showcases more than 500 front pages from 53 countries–minus the ink stains. Each day the Newseum posts Page One from a diverse collection of participating newspapers around the country and world, offering at a glance a chance to compare and contrast how the day’s top stories were reported. You can read the articles (if fully contained on the front page) if you download a PDF version — first click on a small thumbnail image to launch a larger view of a particular newspaper, and from that page you have the option of downloading a PDF. (In Acrobat or Reader, use the Zoom tool to make the text more readable.)

On a day like today–Nov. 8–yesterday’s mid-term elections dominate most of the headlines, with state and area results serving to tailor the coverage for specific regions and communities. It’s a quick way to get a variety of perspectives on current news events from one online portal. The Newseum also maintains an archive of front pages from select news events of “historical significance,” beginning with the 9/11 terrorist attacks up to the current war in Iraq.

With Acrobat 8 now shipping, many users will soon be working with the latest version and exploring the many new and updated features. While some users are content to explore on their own, others might like some expert guidance. Accordingly, a variety of new training resources are beginning to appear–some already available, others coming during the next few months.

Among those we’ve run across so far:

• “Total Training for Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional” - 2 DVDs (NOTE: 20 percent discount to members of the Acrobat User Community)
• “Acrobat 8 Professional Beyond the Basics” - Lynda.com Online Training Library
• “Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible” - Ted Padova
• “Acrobat 8 in the Office” - Donna L. Baker
• “Adobe Acrobat 8 How-Tos: 150 Essential Techniques” - Donna L. Baker
• “Adobe Acrobat 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide” - John Deubert
• “Adobe Acrobat 8 Classroom in a Book” - Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems announced today that Acrobat 8 Professional for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X (a Universal Binary application), and Acrobat 8 Standard for Windows, are now available in English, French, German and Japanese language versions.

According to the Adobe Store, “ship dates vary from product language and deliver type,” as follows:

English and French electronic download versions are now shipping, while the box versions are expected to ship in mid-November

Spanish electronic download and box versions are expected to ship in early January 2007

As noted in a previous blog post, the Acrobat Connect hosted Web conferencing service is available as a free trial through the end of 2006. According to Adobe, the “commercial release of Connect, initially in English, is expected to be available in January 2007 for a subscription price of US$39 per month, or US$395 per year per personal meeting room.”

Windows users can download a free 30-day trial version of Acrobat 8 Professional.

The free Adobe Reader 8 is expected to be available in early December 2006.

With all the buzz about Web 2.0 — a richer, more interactive communication environment than the largely static model that most of us have been weaned on — it’s easy for some to assume that established tools are no longer useful. Among those is e-mail, which in recent years — owing in part to the maddening growth of spam, phishing and other related scourges — has fallen out of favor as a “killer app.” Blogs, RSS feeds, instant messaging, Wikis and other newer, sexier tools have rushed in to replace e-mail for various communication purposes.

Yet e-mail can still serve a valuable role, sometimes even in tandem with one of its wannabee replacements. While the number of blogs seems to be growing exponentially, not all potential readers may be eager to become routine users of RSS readers, or want to understand one syndication format from another–RSS from Atom. But e-mail they probably know and use.

So Feedblitz can help bridge the gap. In short, it’s a free service that turns blogs and feeds into e-mail messages–text-only or HTML (with graphics)–that are automatically sent to subscribers.

I’ve been testing it out on this blog and like the concept. So now I’m going to expand the experiment and offer a simple way for readers to sign up to receive an e-mailed version of every new Acro bytes post. You can either use the form directly below, or link to my sign-up page at Feedblitz. You don’t even need to register at Feedblitz — simply enter your e-mail address (they state it won’t be used for other purposes), then respond to the confirming e-mail message.