Product Description

"The Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible is the comprehensive guide to Acrobat for novices and power users alike. With a concise, easy-to-read format, you will be creating interactive XML forms, enabling streamlined document review processes, and publishing high-impact electronic documents in no time."
—Rick Brown, director of product management, Adobe Acrobat

The book you need to succeed with Adobe Acrobat!

Why do readers turn to the Adobe Acrobat Bible again and again? Because whether you're already experienced with Adobe Acrobat or you're learning to use this powerful tool for the first time, you'll find exactly what you need to know in these well-organized pages. Packed with helpful tips and step-by-step instructions, this latest edition will guide you through both basic and advanced features, enabling you to take full advantage of everything Acrobat 8 has to offer.

• Create, collect, and distribute forms with LiveCycle® Designer
• Work seamlessly with Microsoft® Office applications
• Convert AutoCAD® and Visio® files to PDF
• Discover new ways to edit PDFs and remove sensitive data
• Explore enhanced Shared Reviews tools with easy-to-use Wizard
• Collect form data by exporting it directly to Microsoft Excel®
• Combine files and create PDF Packages using new Acrobat 8 tools

What's on the CD-ROM?

You'll find valuable, author-developed sample files including PDF documents, Adobe Designer forms, and Acrobat PDF forms with JavaScripts—all arranged in folders according to chapters in the book, so you use them along with the book's tutorials. The CD also includes:

• Adobe Reader software
• Entire book in searchable PDF with embedded index
• Windows demonstration plug-ins

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #251808 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1085 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470050514
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Filled with step by step sections and easy to follow diagrams and screenshots make this a good studio reference." (Twohundredby200, October 2007)

From the Back Cover
"The Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible is the comprehensive guide to Acrobat for novices and power users alike. With a concise, easy-to-read format, you will be creating interactive XML forms, enabling streamlined document review processes, and publishing high-impact electronic documents in no time."
—Rick Brown, director of product management, Adobe Acrobat

The book you need to succeed with Adobe Acrobat!

Why do readers turn to the Adobe Acrobat Bible again and again? Because whether you're already experienced with Adobe Acrobat or you're learning to use this powerful tool for the first time, you'll find exactly what you need to know in these well-organized pages. Packed with helpful tips and step-by-step instructions, this latest edition will guide you through both basic and advanced features, enabling you to take full advantage of everything Acrobat 8 has to offer.

• Create, collect, and distribute forms with LiveCycle® Designer
• Work seamlessly with Microsoft® Office applications
• Convert AutoCAD® and Visio® files to PDF
• Discover new ways to edit PDFs and remove sensitive data
• Explore enhanced Shared Reviews tools with easy-to-use Wizard
• Collect form data by exporting it directly to Microsoft Excel®
• Combine files and create PDF Packages using new Acrobat 8 tools

What's on the CD-ROM?

You'll find valuable, author-developed sample files including PDF documents, Adobe Designer forms, and Acrobat PDF forms with JavaScripts—all arranged in folders according to chapters in the book, so you use them along with the book's tutorials. The CD also includes:

• Adobe Reader software
• Entire book in searchable PDF with embedded index
• Windows demonstration plug-ins

See the CD appendix for details and complete system requirements.

About the Author
Ted Padova is the former chief executive officer and managing partner of The Image Source Digital Imaging and Photo Finishing Centers of Ventura and Thousand Oaks, California. He has been involved in digital imaging since founding a service bureau in 1990. He retired from his company in 2005 and now spends his time writing and speaking on Acrobat and PDF.
For more than 17 years, Ted has taught university and higher education classes in graphic design applications and digital prepress at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of California at Los Angeles. He has been, and continues to be, a conference speaker nationally and internationally at PDF conferences.
Ted has written more than 25 computer books and is one of the world’s leading authors on Adobe Acrobat. He has written books on Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Creative Suite (versions 1 and 2), Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Reader, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Adobe Illustrator. Recent books published by John Wiley and Sons include Adobe Acrobat PDF Bible (versions 4, 5, 6, and 7), Color Correction for Digital Photographers Only, Color Correction for Digital Photographers For Dummies, Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 For Dummies — Just the Steps, Creating Adobe Acrobat PDF Forms, Teach Yourself Visually Acrobat 5, and Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Complete Course. He also co-authored Adobe Illustrator Master Class — Illustrator Illuminated and wrote Adobe Reader Revealed for Peachpit/Adobe Press.

Customer Reviews

1085 Pages, Tiny Type - This is Indeed a Bible
Over a thousand pages and the type is small -- just like a real Bible. This book is everything you could possibly have wanted to know about Adobe Acrobat 8. And beyond Acrobat 8 itself, the book discusses and includes on a CD a number of third party add in packages that further extend what Acrobat will do.

Most people who have only Acrobat Reader to read .pdf files will be surprised to find that the program that produces the .pdf file is a huge and powerful software system. This book has everything you could possibly want to know about Acrobat. As with the Acrobat software itself, the book covers both the Windows and the MAC operating environments. In general these are the same, but in several cases where they are different screen shots off of both computers are included.

The book is designed as a reference book where you will jump to just the section containing the information about what you want to do rather than reading straight through like a mystery book. As such it has a pretty good table of contents and a 45 page index at the end of the book.

Great Content, Dreadful layout
Be advised that, while the content of this book is great, the formatting and layout are dreadful. I got it to read, so I could understand of Acrobat's diverse features. I've ended up using it purely as a reference. Every time I've tried to read it, I've given up in frustration after a few paragraphs.

Like many technical manuals, the book is wide at 7.5 inches. A wide-format page calls for creativity in how text is formatted. With my book-length Lord of the Rings chronology, I used that extra width for some 1200 sidebar references to passages in Tolkien's writings. That worked quite well, much better than putting those references (footnote-like) at the bottom of the page.

This book shows no such creativity. The body type is far too small (roughly 9 points) and appears to be printed in grey ink rather than black. The numerous 5 1/2-inch-wide lines of small type make it almost impossible for most readers to jump from the end of one line to the start of the next. In general, any text with more than 70-75 characters per line is hard to read. This book has page after page with 105-110 characters per line. Sheer misery. As any graphics pro will tell you, tiny type and a wide format don't go together. With a bit of work, the staff at Wiley could have created a much better looking book.

The one saving grace is that the book includes a CD with the book as a PDF. Blown up 200%, it is a bit easier to read. (I've even thought of using my Mac's text-to-speech feature to have it read to me.) But the book on CD is almost a case study in how not to do an ebook. It's an enormous 255 meg file that causes Preview (on Macs) to moan and groan. And worse than that, it's formatted just like the printed book, rather than as a demonstration of how PDF can create an ebook that's better than the printed version in some ways. I can at least understand why Wiley might have used tiny type to reduce the page count in their print version. But I can't figure out why they'd do that with an ebook, where pages are virtual and free.

In short, this book is an excellent reference to Acrobat 8, particularly since Adobe no longer includes printed manuals with their products. If that's what you need, look no further. But unless your eyes are young and sharp, don't buy this to read and study, particularly not while traveling by bus, train or plane. Like a dictionary, it's for reference only.

--Mike Perry, Seattle Untangling Tolkien: A Chronology and Commentary for The Lord of the Rings

Difficult to read and incomplete
Loaded with typographical, grammatical and even spelling errors, this book seems rushed to press. It's even missing crucial details about dynamic forms ("expand to fit").

Too much of this book is hard to follow and seems unnecessarily long. I expect more from a "Bible" book.