German, living in the US on an international assignment.
I used to write for Epinions.com (member 4...
German, living in the US on an international assignment.
I used to write for Epinions.com (member 401402, 1,300 members who trust me, 170 Epinions written, read more than 60,000 times) and the German version of Ciao.de (member NoMeansNo) for quite som...
Member since:05.05.2001
Reviews:13
Members who trust:1
Introduction The advertisers of any computer related topic share one major characteristic: they try to make us (users, buyers) believe that what ever they sell is just a snap to use. All too often (and varying on the degree of computer literacy) we not only find ourselves tricked when using the product but also find out that there is really nothing so imperfect as the very product we purchased – measured by the promises we believed in. Some rare exceptions that live up to the promise can not fight the impression that computing is still a collection of tiny technology pieces that actually do not fit together very nicely.
Especially different standards, platforms, releases and technologies make it near to impossible to share and exchange crucial data and information or even work across different computer configurations. Adobe in the earlier years (one of the most successful software developers of all time!) invented tools for a species of computer users that was dependent on sharing information about pieces of work: the desktop publishers, graphic designers and advertising agencies. Anything involved in a creation process that needs to be agreed upon, cries for constant communication about content, layout and format. Brochures, flyers, hand-out’s, presentations, posters and many other creative information carriers are developed at a variety of different software packages, running on all sorts of platforms that are barely compatible in even the simplest functions.
As the most trusted solution provider in tools and packages, Adobe took over the challenge and provided a surprisingly simple but highly effective standard for cross-platform and cross-format document exchange that has influenced whole industries and their working habits in regard of document transfer and communication.
Experience background Almost 6 years ago, when Adobe Acrobat 3.0 was released I was the global advertising and promotion manager of a division in my company, managing advertising campaigns and promotional literature
creation and distribution for our sales organizations in more than 100 countries around the globe. Communication about content, features and layout was very difficult those days between sales organizations, headquarters and all creative outsourcing parties. A graphic designer made me aware of the Acrobat where you could transform documents created in any given program into the PDF (Portable Document Format) format that could be viewed by everyone who would own the small, free Acrobat reader. The transformation could be done by the bigger brother of the Acrobat family, Adobe Acrobat Exchange, which was not very expensive and quite flexible. The PDF file could be created by either saving into this standard directly within Adobe programs or with the help of the Acrobat Writer or Distiller that both worked as a PostScript printer driver creating a WYSIWYG-like file.
Later the PDF file format became even smaller and better in resolution and fully web compatible. While creating the divisional Intranet for the North American organization I made full use of this standard for all kinds of brochures, competitive information and documents that needed to be shared between different platforms.
How it works Whenever you want to share a document and you are not sure on the recipient’s software environment (programs and versions used), you run into trouble to make every end of the communication compatible. With Acrobat you have a free of charge solution because the reader is free and you can download the program from any major download site, plus many software developers have created their manuals in this file standard and thus deliver the program along with their software files on CD-ROM. And you can download the program from Adobe’s homepage of course: http://www.adobe.com.
Imagine you create a brochure in any graphic software package and another text file in any word processing program. You don’t have to struggle anymore for compatibility but ask your partner if she/he uses Acrobat reader, if not they can easily download it for free. If you own the full release of Acrobat the program installs various drivers and plug-in’s in many programs you may use so you can easily save a PDF file then from these applications. For better resolution and improved handling Acrobat delivers additional PostScript based printer drivers and file creation tools so that you can actually either Print into a PDF file or “distill” a given file into this format.
Many scanner software packages write into PDF as well, so you could actually just scan any page ad e-mail it directly to anyone who can read PDF formats. The beauty of Acrobat is not only the platform independent functionality (Acrobat files can be read at any operation system and all other software components are not important as long as you have the reader installed or your browser recognizes PDF documents) but the file size as well. A full colored and photo enhanced page will shrink to a couple of KB or some hundred. Scanning the same page as TIF would easily ten fold the file size.
All modern Internet browsers support the standard too via plug-in’s or file helpers (Mac), if you do not find the respective format capability in your browser, just check the plug-in download page, embedded in your browser’s support home page.
The small file size has a price though: the size is cut down by lowering resolution as the system is meant to be a viewing and communication tool. Printing will sow some quality loss but screen views are always very clean if the author does not use the lowest resolution for the file. JPG and other down-sizing file formats are used as standards to transform the pixels into the respective resolutions.
Two versions One of the major success factors of the program after the platform independent functionality was the free reader application. Right from the start Adobe aimed to give access to everyone. The reader features some basic tools like viewing the pages in the format they were saved by the author (different view modes available, even enhanced with hyperlinks) and read, modify and create notes that can be located at any given location of the viewed document. Imagine your advertising agency sends you a draft of a new brochure and you want to discuss it with work groups around the globe. Any position at any page of the brochure can be commented by the participants by creating little sticky notes and pit them right at the point of interest within the document. Isn’t that something?
The full version features a lot more and is still a very handy program in use (read on).
Full version Once you have created a PDF file you can modify and enhance it with the full release of Acrobat. Here are some of the major functions that might revolutionize your communication habits:
Thumbnails Create thumbnails to every page at the left side of the page view. It gives a very good overview and impression of all existing pages within a file. Clicking into a thumbnail brings you right into the page.
Hyperlinks You can create hyperlinks at any location of text and pictures within the pages. The functions the link can perform are not only jumping to different locations but open a specific page view, perform imports, run Java scripts, start movies within the page, open other files or jump to web sites, opening the browser automatically
Open web sites If you are working on web projects, you can open web sites (al graphics and links contained) and save them as PDF files after creating your own notes and additional links.
Crop text Extract text from existing PDF or web sites and even over-wright, modify it. Especially helpful if you have to update information and don’t want to create the document from scratch.
Multimedia enhancements Embed movies and sound files that can be opened with a single click. If you run an presentation with PDF files this will give you a full range capability of any presentation software.
Text tools Create and place notes anywhere. You can even highlight text and circle parts with the pencil tool or add drawing to the existing page.
File functions Import/Export scans, html, and many other file formats. Every PDF file can be individually signed and preferences can be given on how the document will be opened and viewed when opened. If you choose the full screen option nobody will even realize what kind of file she/he would watch. With all link functions (even buttons can be created) a full view presentation with PDF files can be very attractive communications carriers. Collections of PDF files can be generated and processed with a batch function that chooses files from folders.
Additional functions Some of the additional functions include a variety of templates and form fields. Different views (when full screen view is switched off) give you the best perspective for the purpose. Page comparison, would count and different crop features are further tools that make PDF file handling very useful.
System requirements Acrobat runs practically with all versions of Windows and MacOS. Linux and Unix versions are in the works for the next version. In order to recognize different font sets Acrobat is available for different language groups (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, East Europe Cyrillic etc.).
Conclusion If your projects and communication requirements involve document views and discussions, development and modifications Acrobat is the tool to check out. It has revolutionized many companies and their working habits. As a full hyperlink compatible document format with a pretty small file size and web compatibility, this tool is made for the future and will be developed a lot further as documents and their file standards evolve. Adobe’s strategy to offer a full version and a variety of free tools (reader, plug-in’s, etc.) created a win-win situation for all parties involved. This may have been the kick-off solution for the company when they realized early enough that they needed (and wanted) to offer useful products way beyond the graphic designers that was the major target group for their products some 20 years ago. Today Adobe is one of the most successful software developers of all time. Guess why…
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A very good informative opinion, everything you could want to know about Acrobat has been included.
moose 19.05.2001 17:46
Acrobat has been an essential tool in the recent EU research funding applications that I have recently made. Without Acrobat I wouldn't have been able to combine the documents into one file. Its been an absolute nightmare but I'm finally getting to grips with this piece of software! An extremely comprehensive review - I didn't realise how complex the programme was, ta!
colinlivingstone 12.05.2001 21:35
Very knowledgeable op, a pleasure to read. Cheers.
Advantages: Allows documents to be viewed on different platforms and operating systems, protects intellectual property, reduces use of paper and saves money for businesses, compresses data for effective storage Disadvantages: You can't copy data from pdf files which might be a problem for some people, acrobat reader 5.0 had quite a few bugs
Advantages: Allows documents to be viewed on different platforms and operating systems, protects intellectual property, reduces use of paper and saves money for businesses, compresses data for effective storage Disadvantages: You can't copy data from pdf files which might be a problem for some people, acrobat reader 5.0 had quite a few bugs
May 12th, 2001
very helpful by (100%):
