Ted Padova’s AUC Blog

For those who use the Adobe Creative Suite, you may have noticed the appearance of the Go to Bridge tool (see Figure 1) in the File toolbar in Acrobat and the addition of the Browse command in the File menu. Some of you may have seen the tool appear in Acrobat 8.0, but lost it after installing Acrobat 8.1.

Personally, I like the shortcut to open Adobe Bridge while working in Acrobat. The Organizer is a great tool for accessing commonly used files such as reference documents like the Acrobat complete help PDF file, the JavaScript Specification Manual, and a host of different files you can use for samples and help documents for Adobe LiveCycle Designer.

However, when poking around my hard drive, I prefer to use Adobe Bridge. The Bridge window shows thumbnails of all the files and folders on mounted drives and I can easily locate documents in a new improved interface introduced in version CS3.

One can easily launch Bridge from the Status Bar (Windows) or the Dock (Macintosh) so it’s really not a big deal if the Go to Bridge tool is not showing up in your File toolbar. But, having the tool in Acrobat, just adds a little more ease in accessing Bridge.

To get the tool to show up in the File toolbar is a painful process if you don’t see it now in Acrobat 8.1. If you installed Acrobat, then later install the Adobe Creative Suite, the tool appears in Acrobat 8.0. However, installing the Acrobat 8.1 patch, eliminates the tool from the File toolbar and it won’t show up anywhere in the More Tools window.

If you install Acrobat from the CS3 installer DVD-Rom along with the CS3 apps, then upgrade Acrobat, the tool remains installed in the File toolbar. However, if you deinstall Acrobat and need to reinstall it, running the 8.0 installer gets the tool back in the File toolbar, but upgrading to 8.1 looses the tool. Your only solution is to completely deinstall the CS3 applications, then run the installer and install Acrobat along with the CS3 apps and later upgrade to Acrobat 8.1. This is a task that will take you hours due to the unbearably slow install process for the CS3 applications.

If you happen to have several licensed copies of Acrobat and the Go to Bridge tool appears on one machine while not showing up on other machines, you can’t copy the plug-ins folder from one computer to another to get the tool installed. It’s a plug-in, but for some reason it won’t show up by copying plug-ins from one computer to another. Also, don’t look at repairing the Acrobat installation. That won’t do it either. Again, the only way I’ve found is to do a complete deinstall/reinstall of Acrobat and the CS3 apps from the CS3 installer DVD.

If you happen to find an easier solution, post it here.

ted

One thing that always surprises me when I sit in an Adobe conference room or attend a conference session led by an Adobe employee is watching a Powerpoint presentation on an LCD. I know that creating presentations is handy in PowerPoint, but after preparing presentations in layout programs and converting to PDF for more that 15 years, I find that I can whiz through the creation stage about as fast using InDesign and Acrobat as I can using PowerPoint.

I enjoy much more creative freedom using Adobe InDesign than I have using PowerPoint. With features in InDesign such as Table and Object Styles, my creation steps are reduced to a fraction of the time I once spent assembling a presentation. Furthermore, with a little refinement of some tips offered by Dallas based designer Bryan Tamayo in his article Thinking Outside the Page and reported here on Acrobat Users, I can add a little more design freedom to my slide presentations.

Take Figure 1 as an example. I find that adding icons and page numbers off the document page provide me a little more real estate for adding bullet points on the document pages.

Figure 1

Let’s take a look at the circle on the lower right side of Figure 1. To create a similar design, I start on a Master Page in Adobe InDesign. The circle is off the page and the page number is reported inside the circle. When you place objects off the page, you need to have the center-point of the object within the page boundary. To get the circle to appear off the page, we need to finesse it a little.

Draw an object in InDesign or import an object from Adobe Illustrator on to a Master Page in Adobe InDesign. For the circle in Figure 1 I add a little stroke (just a 0-point stroke with about a 1-point length) offset to the left. All you need is a dot offset from the object. When I select the objects you something similar to the selection shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

With both objects selected I choose Object > Group. When the objects are grouped the bounding box changes to what you see in Figure 3. You can see that the center-point has now changed for the circle object and when I place the graphic off the page, I can keep the center-point within the page boundary (this is essential) while the circle is completely moved off the page.

Figure 3

My next step is to add a page number to the center of the circle. I draw a text box and right align (Command/Ctrl + Shift + R) my text. I can choose my font colors and styles from the Type menu to format the font. After formatting the font, I choose Type > Insert Special Character > Markers > Current Page Number or press Option/Alt + Shift + Command/Ctrl+N to set the text to an auto page number.

Next, move the page number to the position you want to appear on the object. Select both objects as you see in Figure 4.

Figure 4

With the objects selected, again visit the Object menu and choose Group. The bounding box and page position are shown in Figure 5. Notice that the center-point falls well within the page boundary.

Figure 5

The last step to finish off this graphic is to convert the object (now grouped as a single object) to a button and set the button action. With the object selected, choose Object > Interactive > Convert to Button.

The Button Options dialog box opens. Click the Behaviors tab and choose a Behavior from the drop down menu. For my button I want to use the button action to open the next page in my slide presentation. Therefore I choose Go To Next Page.

As a last step, click the Add button so the behavior appears in the left pane as you see in Figure 6. Then click OK.

Figure 6

If you want to change the button action to an action type that doesn’t appear in InDesign, you can do so by double clicking the button with the Select Object tool in Acrobat and click the Actions tab when the Button Properties dialog box opens. In the Actions tab you can assign any action Acrobat provides you by making selections from the Select Action drop down menu.

When you convert to PDF from InDesign, make sure you check the box for Interactive Elements in the Options area of the Export Adobe PDF dialog box (shown in Figure 7) you get when you choose File > Export.

Figure 7

Some other advantages you have in using InDesign as your original authoring program for slide presentations include converting to Adobe PDF Layers, using Table and Object styles to facilitate your design creations, and using the marvelous style sheets that only InDesign provides. Once in Acrobat you can import video and sound, add page transitions, link to other PDFs and external application documents, and of course all the other functions and features Acrobat provides you.

In regard to Adobe PDF Layers, if you happen to create multi-lingual documents you can add all graphics to a background layer in InDesign and add layers for different language versions. When you convert to PDF with the Create Acrobat Layers checkbox enabled in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, your InDesign layers are viewed as separate layers in Acrobat/Reader. When making presentations in a different language you can toggle the layer view to the language you’re addressing.

An argument many PowerPoint users may advocate is that it’s easier to modify a presentation in PowerPoint than InDesign and recreating a PDF. I don’t see using InDesign as a problem for modifying my presentations. At times I’ve had to revise an entire presentation after adding all my links in the Acrobat PDF. Assuming the links remain the same, all I had to do is convert a second document to PDF and use the Document > Replace Pages command to replace the background pages while retaining my button links in the new PDF.

What about handouts and speaker notes? Admittedly, creating handouts and speaker notes is much easier in PowerPoint than InDesign. However, you can create these items in InDesign such as you see in Figure 8.

Just create a frame and design elements on a master page and place your PDF slide presentation using the Show Import Options item in the Place dialog box when placing your slide show on the document pages. Unfortunately, you need to place each page individually making it a much more timely task than using PowerPoint —but placing PDF pages in InDesign is a matter of just loading the cursor and scrolling pages to place the PDF pages on new InDesign pages. I find the trade-off for taking a little more time with an InDesign authored presentation not to be a hassle when I need speaker notes or handouts.

Figure 8

If I’m speaking on Adobe Acrobat and PDF, then my PDF presentations provide me much more credibility with my audience.

—ted

If you create a PDF document with Adobe PDF layers such as exporting layered files from Illustrator or Adobe InDesign and add a button field to the PDF, the button appears on each layer. It’s like the button has it’s own layer and you can’t assign a button field to a specific layer. This can present some problems if you want to use buttons to show/hide layers and invoke actions such as showing videos or playing sounds. If the buttons are accessible no matter what layer is in view, you have to be careful with your design so the user won’t inadvertently click the wrong button.

Take Figure 1 as an example. The showVideo button opens the video layer where a video can be played. The play buttons are left of the button that brings the video layer in view. The proximity of the buttons can be confusing if a user wants to click the Stop button and accidently clicks the showVideo button. Since the buttons are visible on all layers, you need to create a workaround to help the end user avoid confusion.

Figure 1

A workaround in previous versions of Acrobat was to add a Show/Hide action that hides buttons that should be assigned to layers not visible in the present view. When you change a layer view, you had to go about showing the buttons on the layer where you want to invoke actions respective to the visible layer.

A better way to handle the problem is to assign buttons to specific layers. However, you cannot do that in Acrobat. But fortunately with a little help with InDesign CS3, you can add buttons to individual layers that are shown with the layer visibility in Acrobat. If the layer with a button is not visible, the button along with the design elements remain hidden.

Here’s how to do it.

Open InDesign and create your layout. Draw a rectangle with the Rectangle Tool. It doesn’t matter what size you draw or apply borders or fills to the button. The size and appearance settings can be changed in Acrobat.

Select one of the rectangles you drew and open the Object menu and choose Interactive > Convert to Button. Convert each rectangle to a button that you want to appear as a button field in Acrobat. Change layer views and add more rectangles and convert to buttons. The buttons you create on layers in InDesign will be visible in Acrobat only when the given layer is in view.

When you export to PDF be certain to check the checkboxes for Create Acrobat Layers and Interactive Elements in the Export to Adobe PDF dialog box. (See Figure 2).

Figure 2

In Acrobat you can change the appearance and size of the buttons. Although InDesign is limited in the number of different actions you can assign to a button, you can change all actions in Acrobat. For example, InDesign doesn’t provide an option to Run a JavaScript. However, just use the Select Object tool in Acrobat and double click a button you created in InDesign and you can select any action that Acrobat provides you including Run a JavaScript. Changing size, appearance and actions won’t affect the layer assignment you made in InDesign.

Another nice feature you have in InDesign is creating several more shapes than the single rectangle object you draw with Acrobat’s Button tool. Create a rectangle in InDesign and open the Object menu. Choose Convert Shape and a submenu opens with nine different options for an object appearance as shown in Figure 3. Any one of these objects can be converted to a button and the button appearance is shown in Acrobat.

Unfortunately you can’t change button appearances on objects other than rectangles in Acrobat. If you want a border color and/or fill applied to the button shape for all buttons other than a rectangle, you need to add the appearances in InDesign. Figure 3 shows the options choices you have in InDesign with borders and fills applied before exporting to PDF.

Figure 3

What about Text fields? Unfortunately we don’t yet have an option in InDesign to convert a text frame to an Acrobat text form field. Any fields you create in Acrobat will be visible on all layers.

I remember years ago when I had total control over my computer. No one —not even Microsoft, Adobe, or Apple, forced me to conform to certain configurations for my hardware and software. Those were glorious days when I could easily network my computers without having a bunch of security forced upon me. After all, they were my computers, I used them, and I wasn’t threatened by anyone breaking into my house and trying to steal data off my network. Heck, anyone who broke into my house was more likely to steal the computers!

Much of my freedom of choice was taken away due to complaints by IT managers who required more security in their workplaces. Hence, I was forced to add log-ons and passwords to configure my home systems even though I didn’t need it. The complaints of those representing the many outweighed the wishes of the few. As time passed by, I experienced more limits in my personal freedom for configuring my systems due to the whining of IT managers and the lack of creativity of software developers. Rather than offer choices for end users, we simply had to conform to new implementations of security that satisfied the desires of those barking the loudest.

Take Acrobat as an example. In version 8 we lost all those nice ExecMenu Items in the program. Rather than provide users the ability to disable certain features as a user controlled option, Adobe chose to wipe out a number of commands because some IT managers saw certain features as a security breach. Those who wanted access to all the commands were left out.

In Acrobat 6 we had a little plug-in that enabled us to search the Internet for PDF files using Yahoo. That changed to searching the Internet using Google in Acrobat 7. In Acrobat 8, we don’t have any plug-in to search the Internet for PDFs via a button using either Yahoo or Google. No doubt Google complained during the Acrobat 6 life cycle and Yahoo complained during the Acrobat 7 life cycle. The answer to the problem of course is, let’s just take the thing away from all the users and everyone will be happy.

Now in Acrobat 8, we have the entire printing industry complaining about a little plug-in that made it easy for end users to get some files duplicated at a copy shop. If I’m speaking in New York City, I could easily hit the FedEx/Kinkos button on the Reader/Acrobat toolbar to order some copies of handouts and have them ready when I arrive at JFK. Of course I could do a Google search (oops… maybe I should just say search because Yahoo may get on my case) to find a print shop. But having the button on the Reader/Acrobat toolbar just made it a little easier for me. Isn’t that what computers are supposed to do —make life easier for us? Well, the print industry did enough whining about the unfairness of giving FedEx/Kinkos an advantage and once again the answer is to just take it away from all of us to satisfy the needs of the complainers.

When do you suppose that a software developer will start to make efforts to satisfy the needs of the minorities as well as meet the demands of the masses? A little creativity such as providing a plug-in manager that could let us users decide whether we want to use FedEx/Kinkos, Sir Speedy, PIP, or some other print service puts more control back into our hands.

What are your thoughts?

I just read over the Dallas AUG meeting notes and clicked the link to download a sample PDF created by Bryan Tamayo, a Senior Graphic Designer at Fossil, Inc.

Bryan uses InDesign CS2 and Acrobat Professional to create some very impressive page layouts with images that extend beyond the page borders. It’s a super tip and I recommend all InDesign/Acrobat Profesional users look over the sample PDF file where Bryan details how to create appearances where your images can extend beyond the page borders.

—ted

Adobe has been improving your ability to create table designs and working with table data in several applications for some time. In Acrobat 8 we have some nice features for copying and exporting table data to spreadsheets. With the new form features in Acrobat 8 we can easily export form data to spreadsheets.

Now with the recent release of Adobe InDesign CS3 we have much more control over tables at the design stage. As a matter of fact, I’d rank the new table styles in InDesign CS3 as one of InDesign’s best new features.

For you table designers, let me outline a workflow for creating and editing tables to illustrate how Adobe has improved working with tables at the design level and swapping table data between applications.

Using Microsoft Excel

I’ll start my table creation in MS Excel —nothing new here for creating a simple spreadsheet with columns and rows. In Excel I don’t add any special formatting or design styles. I just create a table by adding data to two columns and seven rows and save the file in native xls format from Excel.

Formatting a Table in InDesign

After saving the Excel spreadsheet as an xls file, I open InDesign CS3. Import the Excel data like you would import any graphic or type by using the File > Place menu command. When the data are placed in InDesign, the text comes in unformatted. Using InDesign’s Table > Convert Text to Table menu command a simple click converts the text to a table. Figure 1 shows the raw text placed in InDesign on the pasteboard on the left and the text converted to a table on the document page.

Figure 1

If you format a table for a single instance, then InDesign’s new features won’t be necessary. However, if you plan on using a table design several times in a layout or in different layouts, then the new Table and Cell Style sheets will be most welcomed.

I’ll start my table setup by first adding Character and Paragraph Styles for formatting table cells. All I need is a single instance for a cell in a column and row and then I can apply the styles to type requiring the same style in additional columns and rows.

In Figure 2 I have a nested style in the first column and another paragraph style in the second column. Nested Styles were introduced in InDesign CS2. This nested style includes the text formatting for the first line of text and a different point size for the type in the second line. Adding a soft return to the paragraph enables me to create a nested style using the character attributes in the first and second lines. In column two I format the text for type style and justification and capture the formatting in a second paragraph style.

I finish off my table design by adding some alternating fills for the rows and formatting the first row as a header row and define the fill and text color for the header in another Paragraph Style.

Creating a Table Style

After adding all the Paragraph Styles you need for your table, the next step is to create a Table Style. You may be first inclined to use InDesign’s Cell Styles panel, but hold off on this until you add a new Table Style.

I select my table and open the Table Styles panel in InDesign. Click the Create new style icon in the panel and the New Table Style dialog box opens as you see in Figure 3. In this dialog box I can add column and row strokes and fills, but it’s just as easy to handle these table design attributes before opening the New Table Style dialog box as I did before opening the dialog box.

Figure 3

Add a name for your new Table Style and click OK.

Creating Cell Styles

For a single instance for each unique cell in my table I create a Cell Style. Press Option/Alt and click the Create new style icon in the Cell Styles panel. Adding the modifier key opens the New Cell Style dialog box shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Notice at the bottom of the dialog box you have all your Paragraph Styles listed in the Paragraph Style pull-down menu. Choose the Paragraph Style respective to the cell you are adding to the style and click OK. Select all the cells requiring the same formatting and click the respect cell style to format the cells.

Another nice new feature in InDesign is the folder options you now have available for organizing style sheets. In Figure 5 you see the cell styles nested in a folder in the Cell Styles panel. Just click the Create a New Style Group icon to create a new folder and drag and drop your style names in the folder to organize them.

Figure 5

Applying Cell Styles to a Table Style

At this point I return to my Table Style and open a context menu on the Table Style name in the Table Styles panel. From the menu options I choose Edit “table style name” to open the Table Style Options dialog box. This dialog is identical to the New Table Style dialog box I opened when I first created my Table Style.

At the bottom of the Table Style Options dialog box you find the Cell Styles options for the Table Style as shown in Figure 6. Open the pull-down menus and choose the Cell Styles for the rows and columns you want to define with the respective Cell Styles. Click OK and your new Table Style is ready to use.

Figure 6

Importing Styles

If you create additional layouts and want to use the same Table Style in a new layout, open the Table Styles fly-out menu and choose Load Table and Cell Styles. The Open a File dialog box opens where you can navigate and select the InDesign file having the Table Style you want to use. Select the file and click Open and the Load Styles dialog box opens as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7

Notice that all the Table and Cell Styles along with the Character and Paragraph Styles are loaded when you select all the styles to load. At this point you can import another Excel Spreadsheet, convert it to a table and apply the Table Style to reproduce an identical table design in your new document.

Converting to PDF

Export the InDesign file using the File > Export command and choose PDF as the file format. The layout is converted to PDF and when View PDF after Exporting is toggled on, the file opens in Acrobat as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8

Round trip table editing

If you import an Excel spreadsheet in InDesign, the table is dynamic and maintains a link to the original Excel spreadsheet. Open the Links panel and double click the Excel import and the file opens in Excel. Make any changes to the data and save the file and the InDesign document is dynamically updated. All your style sheets remain intact and the Excel changes are formatted according to the Cell Styles you created in InDesign.

Getting table data out of Acrobat and back to a spreadsheet is a simple task in Acrobat 8. Use the Select tool to select a table and from the popup menu you have several choices for extracting table data. As shown in Figure 9 you can copy a table, save a table, or open the table directly in MS Excel by choosing Open Table in Spreadsheet.

Figure 9

Unfortunately, we still have one missing link in regard to editing tables. You cannot export a table back to InDesign from Acrobat, edit the table data and dynamically update the table in the PDF. You still need to export from InDesign a new PDF document with revised table data. If working on a multi-page document you would then use the Document > Replace Pages menu command to replace the old table with the new one.Perhaps InDesign CS4 and Acrobat 9 will offer us a bit more. For now, the new table formatting options you have in InDesign CS3 can save you much time when replicating tables with identical design appearances.

ted

Adobe Acrobat has never been good at converting PDF to HTML and this is still the case in version 8 of Acrobat. It’s like HTML conversion to PDF was something the engineering teams stopped working on in Acrobat 4 and we haven’t seen any improvements in this area.

I’ve been curious about how conversion to HTML from some of the CS3 applications is handled and what kinds of workarounds I might find using the newest releases of the Creative Suite applications and Acrobat 8. Perhaps we might be able to use the new CS3 applications to convert layouts to HTML —something we can do before creating a PDF file or maybe there are some workarounds using Acrobat 8.

After all, Adobe acquired the king of screen display developers when Macromedia was acquired, so it’s reasonable to think that the integration of Adobe Acrobat, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Dreamweaver would marvel us on file format conversions.

To satisfy my curiosity I first took a look at an export direct from Adobe InDesign to HTML. InDesign has had this feature built into the program for several generations. Now, in InDesign CS3 (version 5 of InDesign) you select File > Cross-media Export > XHTML /Dreamweaver to convert your InDesign document to an HTML file. Wow! I thought. This has got to be a great feature —look at these fancy new menu commands!

To test conversions to HTML directly from InDesign CS3 I used a one-page layout shown in Figure 1. I knew the vertical type would be a problem, but I was interested in seeing how InDesign would handle this and the transparent background images and columnar text.

Figure 1 – Click for larger image.

After exporting the InDesign file to XHTML, I opened the document in Dreamweaver. As you can see in Figure 2 when I previewed the Dreamweaver file in a Web browser, the InDesign CS3 conversion was a big disappointment.

Figure 2 – Click for larger image.

Export to HTML from Acrobat

Acrobat 8 has a tool on the Tasks toolbar specifically to take advantage of the improved export features in Acrobat. Word exports received a lot of attention during the development of Acrobat 8 and Adobe claims Acrobat has a much better means for exporting text to Word. From the Export Task button pull-down menu you can also choose to export PDF documents to HTML.

I decided to take my InDesign file and convert it to a PDF document, then make my conversion from within Acrobat. From the Export Task button menu I exported the PDF file using the HTML Web Page menu command. Oddly enough, Acrobat exported the entire page as an image. The image integrity was preserved as far as the layout appearance goes, but the text appeared bitmapped (see Figure 3) and wasn’t editable. The entire page was one single image.

Figure 3 – Click for larger image.

That vertical text along the left side was preserved since the conversion made a bitmap image out of the page. This conversion is really no better than hosting the original PDF on a Web site. As a matter of fact, the original PDF looks much better and you can search the text —something you can’t do with the poor HTML conversion from Acrobat.

Third party applications and plug-ins

Acrobat wasn’t going to do the job, so I thought I’d take a look at one of the many third party products that support PDF to HTML conversions. My first stop was to download the newest version of Gemini from Iceni Technology (www.iceni.com/gemini.htm) for the Mac. This product has been a long time third party application for converting PDFs to HTML and it’s available for both Mac and Windows users.

I installed Gemini on my Mac and opened the same PDF document I used for the other conversions. The results were about as impressive as my conversion from InDesign as you can see in Figure 4. This may not be a fair assessment of the Gemini product since it does much more than convert PDF to HTML. But I was looking for a quick, no nonsense HTML conversion tool, and for that particular task, Gemini wasn’t my answer.

Figure 4 – Click for larger image.

Still in search of something fast and efficient for converting my PDF documents to HTML, I stumbled on to Smart PDF Converter from SmartSoft (www.smartpdfconverter.com). I ran the same file through this conversion utility and with much better success than all the other options I explored. My file was converted to HTML with the text and graphics in tact and editable as you can see in Figure 5.

Figure 5 – Click for larger image.

Note that currently Smart PDF Converter is a Windows only application.

The Bottom Line

In my tests I found conversion to HTML Web Pages very poor from InDesign and Acrobat. I tested several files and they all were much less usable than copying and pasting text in Dreamweaver.

After converting to PDF I tried several things in Acrobat. I optimized the PDFs; exported in both HTML supported formats (HTML v3.2 and HTML v4.01), and exported several PDF documents. The results were all the same —very poor conversion and when text is recognized, the document integrity is lost.

As has been the case with earlier versions of Acrobat, the best conversions are made by third party products —either Acrobat Plug-ins or stand alone applications. I tested just two products that are mentioned in this blog post.

My tests demonstrated that the Smart PDF Converter from SmartSoft produced the best results for PDF to HTML conversions. You can open the converted files directly in Dreamweaver and make edits to the HTML. Previewing the converted documents in Web browsers displays an HTML page very similar to the look you see in Acrobat when viewing the PDF.

There are a number of different conversion tools for converting PDFs to HTML. I spent a short time looking at very quick methods for converting PDFs to HTML using two different third party applications. I know there are more tools around. I’d be interested in hearing from others who have found workarounds and/or tools that work well with PDF conversion to HTML.

Post your comments here if you’ve found a workflow that produces good results when you want your PDFs to be displayed as Web pages.

ted

PS
For some enlightenment on one button conversions to MS Word and the problems associated with simple exports from Acrobat, see Duff Johnson’s Blog

After hanging around the Ask the Expert forum for the past few months, I’ve noticed, among some other common recurring questions, one question that keeps popping up: how do I change a font, font color, font size, etc. in a Text box? Although the questions aren’t always clear about what text box a user is talking about, we generally nail it down to a comment tool.

In Figure 1 you can see a Text Box Comment added to a PDF page. Unfortunately, the original installation of Acrobat 8 has a similar type of default appearance. The Box has a screened background and the text color is red. How do I change that red color to black are the cries of the Acrobat 8 users.

Figure 1

Logic immediately points us to a Properties dialog box like we might use for many other Acrobat options settings. However, when you open the Properties dialog box for just about any type of command or markup you see a dialog box similar to Figure 2.

Figure 2

Notice in Figure 2 we can take care of the background fill by clicking on the Fill Color swatch to open the color swatches. Click on No Color or White to change the background fill to a transparent color or a white background. On the left you also see a color swatch for the border. Likewise you can select No Color or another color if you want a keyline border around the text box.

What you don’t have however, are options choices for changing font attributes. This is the problem that’s driving a good many users crazy. The settings aren’t there in the Properties dialog box. So where are they?

Dismiss the Properties dialog box and open the Properties Bar. To access the Properties Bar open a context menu on the Toolbar Well and select Properties Bar. When you click inside a Text Box comment so a blinking cursor appears, or you highlight text as you see in Figure 3, all the type attributes appear in the Properties Bar.

Figure 3

In Figure 3, I have the Font Color menu open to change the font color. You also have options for changing alignment, font sizes, font styles, and super/subscripts and paragraph formatting.

Whenever you engage in any type of commenting and review session or just simply use some comment tools to mark up a document, remember to always open that Properties Bar. Unlike so many other Acrobat features that are often redundant and can be found in several different places around the tools, palettes and menu commands, changing font attributes in comments can only be handled in one place —the Properties Bar.

ted

I decided to digest the recent announcement regarding the PDF specification moving to an ISO standard for a bit of time before adding yet another blog post on the subject.

As you can see in other posts by Carl Young, Leonard Rosenthol and Thom Parker right here on Acrobat Users, there won’t be any changes to the way you work with PDF documents and how your files are viewed and used by others. For all of us users, we won’t see much difference in creating and deploying our documents and we won’t loose any fuctionality with Acrobat and how Acrobat and Adobe Reader handle PDFs.

So the question no doubt pops up in peoples minds as to why the PDF specification is moving to the ISO (International Standards Organization) committee? The obvious reason and the operative here is International .

PDF is a standard in so many industries now and within many international organizations. This standardization has been driven by users worldwide working in a number of different industries. Among some of the most frequent users of Acrobat and PDF are international governments.

Entities as sensitive as governments need to have some form of assurance. They need assurance that the the results of the work being performed today won’t vanish tomorrow. They need to be assured that documents created today won’t need to be recreated in a few years to support a new technology. With an industry as fast paced as hi-tech, people want to be confident that new technologies won’t replace old methods.

To provide this assurance with the PDF specification, Adobe has submitted the spec to an international body to approve and provide input on the current and future characteristics of the PDF format. When the ISO committee sanctions the PDF specification, any user in any industry in any country in the world can be confident that a formal regulated standard has been adopted and approved by a collective group and not by a single developer.

Hence, the motive is primarily vested in providing users worldwide a degree of confidence that the time and energy you spend on document creation and distribution will be globally accepted.

Assuming the ISO committee approves the spcification and it does indeed become an ISO standard, the concern for users then becomes creating documents that meet the standards. Adobe will surley advance Acrobat development to insure that future releases of Acrobat are capable of producing ISO PDFs. What to watch out for are clone applications that create PDFs that don’t meet the standards. If you’re working with international organizations that demand ISO standard PDFs, be certain the tool you use for PDF creation are producing the PDFs accepted by the ISO.

ted

Worried about your PDF recipients using the proper version of an Acrobat viewer? If you use some of the new features in Acrobat such as creating PDF Packages, enabling PDF forms, etc., you’ll want to make sure that anyone viewing your PDF or filling out a form uses Adobe Reader or Acrobat version 7 or above.

To give a heads up warning to your PDF recipients, create an application alert dialog box that opens when a user opens your file in a version that won’t support some of the document features. Here’s how to do it:

Open a PDF document and select Advanced > Document Processing > Document JavaScripts . The JavaScript Functions diaog box opens. Add a script name such as viewerVersion and click the Add button and the JavaScript Editor opens.

Delete the default text in the JavaScript Editor and type the following code:

if (app.viewerVersion <7.0)
{
var msg = "An Acrobat viewer version 7.0 or above is required to fill in this form."
app.alert (msg);
}

Note that you can change the text within the quote marks to any text you want to appear in the alert dialog box.

Click OK in the JavaScript Editor and click Close in the JavaScript Functions dialog box and save the file with your new edits.

Each time a user opens your file in an Acrobat viewer less than version 7.0 an alert dialog box opens displaying the message you typed within the quote marks. If users open your document in a version 7.0 or greater the dialog box won’t open.

Make a habit of alerting your PDF recipients before they start working on a file.