8 cool things in Acrobat 8
What would a blog entry about a new product be without a Top X list?? Well, I don’t know if these are my “Top 8″, but they are most certainly some interesting new things in Acrobat 8…and in no particular order.
- PDF Packages. Others have written about them, but I think they are a nice solution for gathering up multiple PDFs into a single container with added “metadata” for grouping/collating.
- Improved PDF/A support. In addition to improved compliance testing, you can also have Acrobat correct some of the simpler errors that it finds. Also, Acrobat is now the first product to support PDF/A-1a - the Section 508 version. Most important, perhaps, is that Acrobat can now function as a PDF/A compliant viewer!!!
- Reader Enabling of Forms to SAVE! No more “If it could save, they’d call it Saver!” comments on forums. Acrobat Pro 8 users can now add the ability to Save to forms that they create - provided no more than 500 people will SUBMIT the form back to you (via paper, fax, or electronic). Thanks Adobe - this is GREAT!
- Acrobat Connect - screen sharing & conferencing for the masses!! My only complaint - no “per-use pricing”.
- Better organized menus & toolbars - the new task bar combined with cleaned up menus means that users can find what they are looking for, usually where they expect it! Also technical terms have been removed (where possible) in favor of common language.
- Shared Review - multi-user review and commenting WITHOUT the complexities of a special server. My favorite part - works with Apple’s iDisk!
- Integrated Redaction - it’s not the comprehensive tool that Appligent’s Redax is, but it will give users (in the box!) enough to make sure they don’t end up on the front page of the NYTimes.
- Performance, Performance and Performance! Both Mac & Windows versions not only load faster, but they also work faster. Rendering/drawing, tool selection, etc. Cross the board - the app flies.
So that’s some of my favorites…Feel free to tell me yours…
September 18th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Oy. Looking through the various “Favorite new …” lists, you’re the only one who’s mentioned that there is a limitation on the number of people who can fill out a ’save-enabled’ form. Thank you! I’d be very interested in hearing more about that…. why do I think it’s gonna get ugly?
September 18th, 2006 at 11:56 am
I am going to correct that language…
It’s not the number of people who FILL OUT the form - but the number of people who will SUBMIT the form for processing. Those may or may not practically be the same - but the language Adobe is using falls on the latter (submit).
Personally, I think 500 is QUITE generous! Anyone needing more than that, is a corporation that can/should afford to move to LiveCycle Reader Extensions Server.
It addresses the thousands of users over the years that just want to make a form for their team, or a teacher for their classroom/students, etc. They are 110% good to go!!
September 19th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the clarification. Since we still require wet signatures on the form (for now) I’m not worried yet about submittal. When we get to that point is when we’ll start dealing with the whole LiveCycle Server universe.
November 1st, 2006 at 3:32 pm
[…] 8 cool things in Adobe 8 […]
November 3rd, 2006 at 5:12 pm
LeonardR said: “6. Shared Review - multi-user review and commenting WITHOUT the complexities of a special server.”
Cool! My head’s swimming trying to figure out those darned “special server complexities” of a browser-based review. A handful of people in my department just acquired Acrobat 7.0 Pro, while the rest of us continue to use Reader. Does Acrobat 8’s Shared Review allow the review initiator to enable commenting tools for those who only have Reader? If so, maybe we should upgrade to 8. If not, I guess we’ll stick with 7 and forge ahead.
I’m assuming, of course, that 7’s ability to enable commenting in Reader works for the browser-based reviews, just as it does in the e-mail based reviews. Is that assumption correct?
November 4th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Yes - Acrobat 8 will fully “Reader Enable” your review - no problems. You will, of course, need to update to Reader 8 to participate in the Shared Review.
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:01 am
One of my favorite cool things about the Acrobat 8 are Preflight Fixups. I used to be a big time refryer (I still don’t think it’s all that evil at least for what I was doing.) but now with tha ability to change color from CMYK to RGB and remove stuff outside the Trim Box I have cut my time in half reprocessing the files I get from Prepress. I have been using a bunch of these custom Fixups in batch sequences and they have been working great.