Visual Quickstart Guide Adobe Acrobat 8 for Windows and Macintosh
Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad
Author: John Deubert Released: December 14, 2006, First Edition Pages: 276 $25 USD ISBN-10: 0-321-47079-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-321-47079-9 http://safari.peachpit.com/0321470796 Audience — All but advanced expert users of Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro Strengths — Adobe should have provided this book, at a discount to purchasers of AA8 Pro. It’s no Missing Manual, but it’s not meant to be. It really helped me explore features is Acrobat Pro I’d not previously tried. It is ideal for a new or intermediate user — crisp clearly focused and well organized. Weakness — There’s no apparent sequel to this book that might contain the typical scope of a David Pogue Missing Manuals, however the author provides several suggestion for books more advanced a user can learn from. |
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Where appropriate the instructions in the book were tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.7 |
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Product and company names and
logos in this review may be registered trademarks |
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Publisher’s Overview — Adobe Acrobat 8 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide uses a combination of task-based instruction and strong visuals to teach beginning and intermediate users how to be more productive with Adobe Acrobat. Author John Deubert takes readers step by step through all of the Adobe Acrobat 8 essentials, both basic--creating and viewing electronic documents, streamlining document reviews, using Acrobat's commenting and reviewing tools--and advanced--using digital signatures, creating interactive forms, and protecting sensitive documents. Both beginning users who want a thorough introduction to the topic, and more advanced users looking for a convenient reference will find what they need here in straightforward language, clear steps, and practical tips. By the end of the book, users will be able to smoothly integrate Adobe Acrobat 8 into their workflow.
Review Introduction
As I noted in the review of Acrobat 8 Pro that Robert Pritchett and I wrote for this Issue of Mac, I found the provided Help Manual wimpy from the perspective on an inexperienced user. Even though there is lots of information about problem solving or learning Acrobat 8 Pro’s rich features on the Adobe website, it is not organized in a user-friendly fashion. That’s why good books exist, and Visual Quickstart Guide is one good book.
When first exploring Acrobat 8 Pro, prior to reading this book, I frequently turned to Doug Sahlin’s book How to Do Everything with Adobe Acrobat 7.0 [macCompanion June 2006.] That older book was helpful on the occasions I need more information about learning an existing feature in Acrobat 8 Pro such as form creation and group editing. However, it obviously could not deal with the new features Adobe provided. Alas, the Acrobat 8 Pro help files are terse, and at times confusing and had I been more prescient I would have finished review the Visual Quickstart Guide first.
The Book Itself:
The Acrobat 8 Visual Start Guide is an in-depth introduction to Acrobat 8. This book can be a beginner's and intermediate users guide to most everything one can do with Acrobat 8. It ranges from launching the application to conducting company-wide document reviews. The book introduces you to creating Acrobat forms, describes how to import a wide variety of images and other files into PDF, and steps you through the intricacies of digital signatures. It’s the getting started manual that Adobe forgot. And if the main text and examples are not enough to improve your ability as an Acrobat user, the information rich tips will further allow you to enhance your user experience.
For reader convenience, I’ve tabulated the chapter titles along with my annotations of their usefulness to me. Your favorites will be different, but this is a helpful book and well represents Peachpit’s Visual Quickstart Series. I focus my comments on things that I as a fairly experienced, but not expert user have learned. This in no way diminishes its value to new or less experienced Acrobat 8 Pro users, virtually everything a new user needs to be comfortable with Adobe’s powerful application is found in Author John Deubert’s book. I am chasing more advanced Acrobat 8 Pro guides, which John lists in the back of the book. Keep checking macCompanion; there’s more to come on the subject of leaning Acrobat 8 Pro.
An Annotated Table of Contents – What I Liked and Learned Chapter Name & Review Comments |
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1. |
Starting with Acrobat — A must read for everyone, even if you only skim the chapter. The summary description of the various toolbars, discussed in more detail later in the book will open your eyes to Acrobat 8 Pro’s rich features. |
2. |
Viewing a document — A well-written chapter, that does an excellent job at introducing you to the various ways to view a document while working with it. I had not previously paid attention to the Marquee Zoom, Loupe tool. I was also delighted to learn (Page 31) I could search for text in multiple PDF files on my hard drive [?-Shift-F.] I had a bit of problem with the Reading and Full Screen modes, which I discuss later in the review. |
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Saving & printing files — A must chapter for most readers, especially the parts about minimizing file size and exporting PDF files to either vector or bitmap formats, as well as printer controls and their uses. |
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Making PDF files — The new create a PDF package, something new in Acrobat 8 Pro, is well explained as are the other ways to create PDF from a variety of documents or to export information from a PDF to another format. Now if there were only a way to batch convert a stack of MSW documents to PDF files in one step. At least as a Macintosh user, I’ve yet to find a way. Why is this important? I often drag or copy text and images I want in PDF format, from a web page to an open MSW document. Right now I had to copy one document at a time using Adobe’s PDFMaker. There is no way that I could add a MSW document to a package. Graphics Files, PDF files (including those obtained with a scanner), all are imported. |
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Adding comments to a document — Good material worth reading if you want to add content to an existing document with-out having to go back to your source documents in MSW or an Adobe application. New to me, perhaps because I’d not needed the function was the discussion on sorting, searching importing or exporting comments. |
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Reading commented documents — Although I seldom receive documents with extensive comments in PDF formats, I found the chapter interesting and the information accessible. |
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Reviewing PDF Documents — A must chapter for those doing collaborative review and editing. I pretended to be another reviewer, using my grandson’s networked Macintosh and found the techniques described were easy to understand and carry out. |
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Manipulating pages — The chapter deals with topics covering the complete set of options found in Acrobat 8 Pro’s Document menu. The benefit to me, the tips about using shortcuts to more rapidly manipulate pages in a PDF document are now a part of the ways I display and tune such documents. |
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Adding & changing text & graphics - Need I say more… It’s there use the features. From the information provided in this Visual Quickstart Guide, you be up to speed in just a few minutes — well perhaps a quarter of an hour. |
10. |
Adding simple navigation features — I had not previously done much with adding bookmarks within and between PDF files. I had, almost by trial and error enabled web and email links. Although not yet comfortable with these techniques, the information provided by the author has made this something with which I am more comfortable. |
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Creating an Acrobat presentation — It’s all yours folks, I didn’t even skim this materials since I have absolutely no interest in the topic. |
12. |
Organizing documents — Should I ever need to create complex documents in PDF format, this material will prove useful. The chapter deals with Acrobat 8 Pro’s organizer features clearly and in enough detail to make the effort worth the time. |
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Creating forms with Acrobat Pro — Hurray, Yeah. Despite having attempted to use this feature in Adobe Acrobat 7 and gained partial understanding while reviewing Acrobat 8 Pro, I really need this book to help make form creation and use a standard part of my Acrobat use arsenal. For me this was almost worth reading the book, but that would neglect all else that is useful in this quickstart guide. |
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Password protection — I only skimmed this material since I don’t use this feature. |
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Digital signatures — Frankly, I ignored this section. I’ve escaped corporate America when I retired so have no need for this feature. |
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Converting paper to PDF — Since I actively scan documents and OSR them using ReadIris 11 [http://www.irislink.com/], I found this material interesting and easy to assimilate. But just to share my biases, I hardly ever store text-containing documents as image files. I want to be able to get at and use the text the image contains and that requires using OCR software and doing painful corrections. At this time I’ve not done enough experimentation on the most accurate way to convert scanned documents to editable text. For those of you who don’t own OCR software, using Acrobat will be your only alternative. This chapter explains how. But before limiting yourself to Acrobat 8 Pro’s OCR capabilities, check out the software that came with your scanner, most vendors include OCR tools. |
Appendix A. For More Information: Books and Web Resources — This is excellent follow up materials for Acrobat 8 Pro users wanting sources to become more expert with the program. |
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Index – Useful and complete. I was able to find whatever I needed to recheck while writing this review. |
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Kudos:
Tips — Overall, I had more fun with the tips than with the materials in the first half-dozen chapters. Of course, I’ve been using Acrobat since version 5. My favorite part of the tips discussion were the tips that discussed creating PDF files or using many of the other Acrobat features including printing, and cover default values listed in the application’s preferences. ”The default values are sensible and should generally be left alone.” [We discussed the problems with the complex and at time inexplicable preferences in our Acrobat 8 Pro review in this macCompanion issues.]
Book Tone — Although not quite as seriously tongue in cheek as the books I read by Scott Kelby, John Deubert provides a readable and light touch to an otherwise complex topic. For example, on page 121: "I tend to find it most convenient to use the Options button in the pages navigation pane. You may prefer the other methods, and you have my permission to use them." There’s more, enjoy finding them as you work your way through the book.
Minor Discomforts
Keyboard Shortcuts – On rare occasions the author only provides a Windows system shortcut, something that might cause a beginner user a problem. More advanced users of the Macintosh will automatically convert any shortcut that uses a control key combination to one that used the Command key [?].
Lost in Some Views — I was until I leaned to escape, trapped in reading mode and Full Screen Mode, since I no longer had access to the toolbars in reading mode and to both the menu bar and the tool bars in Full Screen Mode. Pressing F8 on the Macintosh allows you to get your toolbars back, while ?-L gets you out of full Screen mode, as does pressing the escape key. I would have preferred to learn how to escape when the view modes were initially discussed in Chapter 2. [Have I missed something?]
Conclusion
Despite using Acrobat Pro for many years, I had limited my exploration to doing things that were absolutely necessary to complete the tasks at hand. John Deubert’s book has not only expanded my horizon by exposing me to the rich features in Acrobat 8, but also renewed my will to explore and use more of those features. The Visual Quickstart Guide Adobe Acrobat 8 for Windows and Macintosh showed me what was possible, and how to achieve command of those possibilities. Although it’s a score I’d never thought to give a book, this one is well worth a five star rating.
Author BIOs
Deubert was a schoolteacher for nine years, then left in 1984 to join a tiny, unknown startup company named Adobe Systems. As a customer support engineer (before the company had proper customers), John wrote the PostScript Language Tutorial, the front half of Adobe’s standard “Blue Book.” He also put together Adobe’s first classes in PostScript, teaching small groups from Adobe OEMs as they signed up for their first PostScript printers. John Deubert is a longtime Acrobat enthusiast, worked with JavaScript in Acrobat since 1999. John has taught classes on PostScript and Acrobat throughout the world since 1985.
John left Adobe Systems in 1985 to start a software company in San Diego, California. Acumen Training, a training consultancy specializing in engineering courses in PostScript and PDF. During this time, he has continued working for Adobe as a consultant, doing programming, course development, and teaching. He is the author of Creating Adobe Acrobat Forms and Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript, both from Adobe Press.
His website contains many useful articles about both Adobe Acrobat and Post Script. http://www.acumentraining.com/
