Customer Reviews

Web Publishing with Acrobat/PDF

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

 

 

This book is really out dated. If you're working in a 3.0 environment this is good for you. If you are ready for Acrobat 4.0, this book doesn't even know it's coming.

If you want to hyperlink from your HTML page to a certain page in your huge PDF document, this book can help. Although it is out dated, it shows you how to use the PDFMark (shows you the old way). Acrobat 4.0 let's you make the marks super easy compared. The stupid part on Adobe (I can say this because I spend a long time on hold with Adobe Techs on long distance) is they don't even know how to hyperlink from HTML to a certain page in a PDF. It is not included in their PDF manual for 4.0. Finally, someone there directed me towards this book.

Don't expect much from this book but it is a must have if you want to find out what Adobe's not telling you. You won't learn about some of the stuff in this book anywhere else unless you have this book. Or, until Adobe gives us all of the details in their user manuals. Hint hint.

I train people on Acrobat for a living, and I can tell you that this book has captured the annoying little quirks that surprise users. Especially helpful is the account of differences in PDF display between IE and Netscape. The first half of the book is pretty basic, and may mislead the experienced user into thinking that the book is not on their level. Those users may want to skip to Chapter six and beyond. The second half is a goldmine of undocumented and/or one-of-a-kind tidbits of information that will benefit all users. I highly recommend this book to both new and experienced users.

Merz's book is a goldmine of information about publishing with Acrobat. It does not rehash the well-known items contained in the Acrobat documentation, but goes far beyond that. Merz describes undocumented techniques for creating PDF files which interact with Web documents in useful ways. He also includes techniques for creating PDFMarks using Word and including JavaScript in PDF, two things I was really looking for. A very useful book.

Web Publishing with Acrobat (or its German original, Mit Acrobat ins World Wide Web) gives an excellent overview on how to use the interactive features of the PDF format.

Particularly the PDFMARK and the JavaScript sections cover topics otherwise not so easily accessible.

The information in this book did save a major project for me.