In our opinion, Adobe’s new flagship product Acrobat 6 is the most significant release since version 1.0 came out almost 10 years ago. Whilst at the time of writing this piece there are still a few loose ends left to take care of, for the most part we view this release as being truly groundbreaking. Unlike the release of Acrobat 5.0, which in comparison with 6.0 was a fairly minor update, we are much more bullish about the benefits that Acrobat 6.0 is going to bring to its potential customers and users.
From the moment you open the application it becomes immediately obvious that there have been significant effort and resources deployed to this release. If we had to sum up the release in a single word, we’d be suggesting “maturity”.
New toolbars, new menus, new navigation tabs, new pane, new names, new versions, new features. There’s a lot new and there’s a lot to learn. Here’s Planet PDF’s overview of some of the most interesting changes.
Creating PDFs
The latest release has definitely improved the ease of PDF creation. Adobe’s marketing calls this ‘one button’ or ‘one step’ PDF creation and in most cases it really is that easy. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a trivial matter. When you’re dealing with the world at large, simplifying the process of creating a PDF is absolutely the key to increasing and encouraging distribution of PDFs. With the exception of Professional printers, you’ll probably never meet the Distiller again, except by chance in a dark alley.
More on creating PDFs
https://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2714
Commenting & Reviewing
Central to the concept of PDF as a ubiquitious electronic document is its continued development and support of collaboration tools that keep users round tripping documents in electronic form. Acrobat 6 has continued to develop new commenting features and continued to make existing tools more usable. As with the improved features for easy PDF creation, the additions for review and commenting may well be the tweaks that were needed to take this technology from being something which was interesting, to being something which is useful to a lot of people on a daily basis. In fact, not only useful, but perhaps a core part of day-to-day business activity. We think this latest round of changes for review and commenting have what it takes to make it in the business environment.
More on commenting & reviewing
https://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2719
Layers (Optional Content Groups)
The new Layers functionality, technically known as Optional Content Groups, opens up a new world of exciting possibilities. Engineers and architects can start to use this feature with the release of Acrobat 6 Professional, for others it will come over time as companies, including Adobe Systems, add support so that their files can be converted to PDF with layers intact. Expect to see a rich variety of solutions over the next few years as third-party developers see how they can utilize the support now available in the latest 1.5 PDF specification.
More on layers
https://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2715
Reducing File Size & PDF Optimizer
Both Acrobat Standard and Professional include a menu item (File, Reduce File Size) for reducing the file size of the current document. The size of the resulting document will vary depending on the compatibility of the Acrobat version compatibility you select.
More on PDF Optimizer
https://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2716
Acrobat 6 now allows you to search multiple PDF documents, albeit somewhat more slowly, without first having to index them with Catalog. In addition, the search user interface has been redesigned to be, not suprisingly, more Web oriented in its look and feel. This new system looks much more similar to what you would expect from the search system provided by Apple’s Sherlock, the built-in Microsoft Windows XP search and of course, Google itself.
Search and Catalog
Acrobat 6 now allows you to search multiple PDF documents, albeit somewhat more slowly, without first having to index them with Catalog. In addition, the search user interface has been redesigned to be, not surprisingly, more Web oriented in its look and feel. This new system looks much more similar to what you would expect from the search system provided by Apple’s Sherlock, the built-in Microsoft Windows XP search and of course, Google itself.
More on Search and Catalog
https://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2717
Headers & Footers, Watermarks & Backgrounds
Stamping text and images in PDF files has been one of most often requested feature additions to Acrobat over the past few years – it has arrived with Acrobat 6 (Standard and Professional). Acrobat Professional users can now apply them in batches by using the Batch Processing tool.
More on headers, footers, watermarks & backgrounds
https://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2718
Measuring & Zoom
Other creative professional tools include new ways to view a PDF, including:
- Rulers & Measuring — allow you to accurately measure distances and areas of the page.
- Zoom increased — zoom large, detailed documents to 6400%.
- Split window — view different pages of the same PDF by splitting the screen.
- Dynamic Zoom — lets you grab the page and zoom dynamically by moving the cursor around.
- Loupe Tool — ideal for working with large format documents like those generated by AutoCAD. This tool lets you zoom into areas on the page.
Flash, animation, transitions
Fully embedded multimedia has taken its time to move across to PDF — support includes Flash files, MP3 files, PowerPoint animation conversions and better control over Acrobat transitions. Now that it’s here, we’d suggest that we’re going to see some very interesting documents. The concept of PDF being a rich container of content is proven here with this release.
eBooks & DRM
Goodbye Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader, everything is now integrated directly into Acrobat — as long time supporters of eBooks, we’re interested to see the merging of the two separate applications finally happen. All DRM is built in to Acrobat and Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat eBook Readers ‘bookshelf’ tools have been moved across.
Here’s another take on the new Acrobat 6 release.
This article was last modified on April 8, 2003
This article was first published on April 8, 2003
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