Customer Reviews

Adobe(R) Acrobat(R) 4.0 Classroom in a Book (2nd Edition)

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Adobe PDF is a very common file format, largely due to the PDF's ability to faithfully maintain the formatting of a document while offering smaller file sizes, searchable text, printability, and integration with the most popular web browsers. The availability of a PDF viewer, Adobe Acrobat Reader, for free download has played a decisive role in popularity of this file standard. I purchased Adobe Acrobat primarily to be able to create PDF files from Word documents and the like. Although Acrobat comes with a detailed manual available through the "help" menu, it took me almost a year before I actually decided to learn what one can do in Acrobat besides creating PDF files. I decided to start with the "Classroom in a book" manual since I already had positive experience with this series. Indeed, I was not disappointed. First, I discovered many advanced capabilities of Acrobat, which can make PDF format more convenient than any other format; secondly, it was a pleasure to work with the book. If you never used the Adobe "Classroom in a book" series before, the following comments may be useful:

a) the book does not contain anything that is not included in Acrobat Help; In fact, it even contains less information as it periodically referres the readers to one or another chapter of the online manual. The only purpose of this book is to help you to get a "hands-on" practical experience with the program using the example files from the enclosed CD.

b) this book is for the beginners. Acrobat is generally not as sophisticated as many other Adobe products, and this book does not even attempt to go into much detail. If you know nothing about Acrobat, you will find it helpful.

c) Unlike many computer books, this one is very carefully written and edited. The guidelines are very easy to follow both for Windows and Mac users. In this sense, it is an excellent and a very accurate tutorial.

d) most likely you will use this book only once. Later on you would rather refer to Acrobat Help than to the book since the latter one is more complete. Getting this book from the library may be an option to consider.

This is a great book for beginners to get the basics on what this product's capabilities. I never realized that Adobe Acrobat can do so many things! If you need to learn this product quickly, this is the book to get. As you advanced in your abilities with this product, then other books would be more beneficial.

A good "Get your feet wet" book for first time form developers. I read/scanned it in one night as I was looking for more of a "command line reference" (does my DOS programming background show?) where each topic/feature was covered in depth. I have a need to develop semi-complex java scripts forms with auto fill features for a production environment, but the needed support and answers were not here. I do not mean to knock the book as it is well written and has a good walk through methodology, but it is not a fallback "reference" book when you are in over your head in the creation process.

This is not the book one wants to learn Adobe Acrobat. The authors assume anyone using the book is already an expert in using Acrobat. The glossary is totally inadequate so that many of the terms used by the authors are greek to users. I have been in computers for over 40 years and this one of worst manuals I have ever seen. I bought another book which was of more help but still was not comprehensive enough.

I use Acrobat a lot but it has a lot of potential which I have been unable to unlock. Someone needs to write a comprehensive manual that covers every operation step by step. This book did not cut it.