Community Blogs: Kurt Foss: Interactive PDF deserves top seed at ESPN

Posted: 2009-03-16

Interactive PDF deserves top seed at ESPN

It's mid-March again, which means it's time across the United States for the annual hoops hoopla about the championship tournament for college basketball. With the televised announcement late yesterday of the 65 teams set to compete in the national loser-goes-home playoffs -- leading to the Final Four finale in early April -- the sports-minded masses began soon thereafter to organize office betting pools and other off-court competitions based on predicting the game outcomes.

Across the Internet, numerous websites quickly posted printable versions -- many in PDF -- of the tournament brackets, showing only the first-round matchups. As they have for years, users can subsequently update their pairings round-by-round by putting pen or pencil to paper.

But for the Adobe Acrobat- and Adobe Reader-savvy sports fans among us, there's a more exciting option available for the 2009 tournament -- a rich-media (utilizing Adobe Flash), interactive-PDF version developed collaboratively by Adobe and ESPN, the all-sports, all-the-time TV network. Dubbed the Ultimate Tourney Guide, it delivers far more information in a more exciting way than the suddenly old-fashioned, static brackets.

The guide includes live video clips, an interactive poll, updated coverage, and a contest to win a 52-inch TV. Ohhh, AND one more thing: an ESPN Tournament Challenge contest in which users can register for a free ESPN account, select their teams through to the finals, name their projected winner, submit their completed bracket on the ESPN website -- and have a personalized bracket built immediately with their choices and integrated into their dynamic-PDF tournament guide. As the various rounds are played, each participant's live bracket(s) will be automatically updated to show the latest results.

Having downloaded and printed many a traditional PDF bracket over the years, I was eager to see this interactive version in action. After a couple technical glitches -- seemingly related to specific circumstances on my Macintosh -- were resolved, it worked like a charm.

Here's the basic process for creating your custom, auto-updated bracket:

1. Go to ESPN page for the Ultimate Tournament Guide

2. Download and save guide to your desktop

3. Open the guide in Acrobat 9 or Reader 9

4. Click on the Live Bracket option, then click on the red bar near the top to complete and download your personal tourney brackets. It links to the ESPN page where you must complete a free ESPN registration before participating.

5. Log in with your ID and password, click on the yellow Create Entry button, give the new entry a name (you can create up to 10 brackets) and submit your entry settings.

6. On the 2009 Tournament Challenge page, make your selections in the blank brackets by either clicking on the team you pick to win, or by dragging the team's name to the next round.

7. When your bracket is complete, there will be a yellow Submit button at the bottom of the page. Click to submit, then return to your completed bracket.

8. Scroll back to the top of your completed bracket page, then click the Adobe Save to Desktop button.

9. Re-open your Ultimate Tourney Guide, click on Live Bracket. Your personalized bracket should be populated with the choices you made. They will update on a daily basis as games are played.

Now, those two issues that I was able to fix (with help from Joel Geraci, Acrobat technical evangelist, who provided behind-the-scenes development expertise for the project) that seemed to contribute to my initial problem:

• For Mac users, I suggest using Apple's Safari browser version 3.2.1 -- I had problems using Safari v. 3.1.2 which went away after I updated the application (and then after installing, in Acrobat go to Help > Repair Acrobat installation. Do the same if you have only the free Adobe Reader.)

• You can complete up to 10 personal brackets, but don't create a second one without completing and submitting the first one. That may have contributed to a glitch I ran into, which cleared up as soon as I went back to complete and submit my first bracket.

The guide also includes a Help link, which points to an ESPN Help page on AcrobatUsers.com.

Last but not least, for those who simply want a clean, printable PDF bracket, just download and open the tournament guide, go to page 5 and print.

For those who enjoy seeing what more Acrobat and PDF can do, there's a lot to see, do and experience throughout the tournament in the rich-media tournament guide, which is definitely worthy of a top-seed ranking.

• Acrobat 9
• Rich Media