Customer Reviews

Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

I bought it as a reference, not a tutorial, but it does have the latter and the CD with it has samples to use with tutorials if you choose. The CD also provides a searchable PDF of the entire book. Great if you have a laptop as the book is a bulky 2 inches thick.

Each chapter has frequent CROSS-REF statements that refer you to other chapters which will elaborate in more detail on something mentioned in the current chapter. This is a plus! Reduces search time!

If you are looking for an easy cover-to-cover read, this ain't it. If you want a reference where you can look up what you need only when you need it, this 1000+ page book is for you. Many books on this software cost as much or more but have perhaps 1/4 the material with lots of white space and cartoon silliness.

The 22 page TOC and 36 chapters gives you some idea of the depth of coverage. Some books do not have that many pages in the index.

I recently purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M scanner with Acrobat 8 bundled for my Power Mac G5, which won't run v.9, and found this book an excellent reference, with 'How to Do Everything Adobe Acrobat 9' to complement it as a tutorial and overview. My only complaints about the 'Bible' are the small size of the font and too much gray in the titles and sidebars. Five stars, despite eye strain!

I'm really let down by the book in 2 regards:
1. The print is so small it ridiculous.
2. The contrast of the print to the page color is terrible.

There is decent content in the book but the print is on less than newspaper quality paper. It is extremely hard to read.

Although the content is OK, I'd look elsewhere for an easier reading experience (thus better understanding of the subject).

Excellent book to use as a reference. I keep it close by and can always find answers when I use it. Could use more informaion on creating forms, and integrating forms with application data.

Lots of good tips and very helpful navigating the new interface which is a pain to learn. Glad I bought this.