Product Reviews

Adobe will release version 7 of Acrobat before the end of the year. It will be available in Standard and Professional editions, and also as part of a repackaged Creative Suite Premium bundle. Here, we review a late beta pre-release copy to see what's in the PDF store for Christmas.

For those new to Acrobat, be aware it defies a one-sentence description. In simple terms, it lets you create PDF-format documents from any program, and then view, edit and print them on any Mac or Windows computer. Additionally, Acrobat lets you conduct electronic collaborative reviews using PDF as an intermediate document format. PDF itself has also become the standard for prepress submissions within an electronic workflow. It's a multimedia document format, too, supporting embedded sound and movies and sporting presentation-style animated page transitions. Not least, PDF is an electronic book format complete with industrial-strength encryption. This is plenty to deal with already, so we'll concentrate on the upgraded features.

Adore it or abhor it, the Acrobat interface remains largely the same in version 7. This means the same friendly toolbars, panels and How To pane, but it also leaves the menus in the same insane jumble as before. Yet as soon as you run the program, you will notice a huge acceleration in performance. The program loads in just a few seconds and responds to commands nimbly. Clicking on the Advanced button in the Print dialog is no longer an excuse to make a cup of tea. With Acrobat 7, you'll no longer dread double-clicking on a PDF document icon by mistake.

Mac users have cause to rejoice, as Adobe has enabled web browser-based viewing in Acrobat 7 with Safari. While browsing the web, clicking on a link to a PDF now loads the document inside the Safari window, along with a subset of the Acrobat interface toolbars for navigation and printing. You can use Acrobat 7 to instigate a web-based review (in version 6, you're limited to email-based reviews), in which case the PDF loads inside the Safari window along with Acrobat's commenting and annotation toolbars. Reviewing a PDF in this way allows you to add comments and view other people's comments, all of which are maintained in an overlay data file on your server, separate from the PDF file itself.

Setting up browser-based reviews was easier than we expected. You're led through the process step by step, and the reviewing system imposes its own password-protected access in addition to any you've set up for your network or Internet server location. Acrobat 7 then prompts you to invite colleagues to the review, generating an email containing full instructions and accessing your Apple Address Book to help you pick recipient email addresses.

You track browser and email-based reviews using a new Tracker window. This shows the reviews you've initiated, those in which you're participating, and any documents you have taken offline. The Tracker window reminds you of the type of review to which each PDF belongs (browser or email-based) and adds a date stamp every time you download and upload comments.

At the same time, Adobe has developed the security measures built into PDF. After 40-bit and 128-bit RC4 encryption, Acrobat 7 now introduces 128-bit AES encryption for more options on which document components to secure. One of the most striking developments in the upgrade is custom usage rights. This way, as well as protecting a PDF with just one level of security (a password), you can restrict access to a PDF to a specific group of Acrobat-certified users. The big advantage of this approach is that you can revoke individual user rights at any time, and build expiry dates into them.

Encryption now extends to emailing. When you email a PDF from within Acrobat 7, you have the option of enclosing it within an encrypted eEnvelope, ensuring it's delivered securely. This can be helpful for email-based reviews of sensitive material.

PDFs can now be saved

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with an attribute that allows Adobe Reader 7 users to enter text into form fields and save the data. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain a copy of Adobe Reader 7 to try this out, but the intention is that when the program opens a PDF with this attribute, a special Document Message bar appears, containing basic data entry and commenting tools, plus instructions on how to use them. This should mean Adobe Reader users can participate in email-based reviews: that is, it's no longer mandatory for everyone to own a copy of the full version of Acrobat for simple collaboration.

On the subject of reviewing, Acrobat 7 includes new commenting and markup tools. There's a Callout tool, a simple rectangular text box with an arrow pointing at whatever you want. It's astonishing we've had to wait this long for such a basic essential as this. There is also a Dimensioning tool, which adds a CAD-like dimension line and measurement value between any two points. Those working in precision graphics - and prepress - might like the new Measurement toolbar, which lets you measure precisely between two points, or across any multi-segment path, or the area of an enclosed space. The nice thing about the Measurement tools is that they snap to path objects in your document, ensuring an accurate result.

A new Organizer window provides a fast visual browser of all your PDFs, showing page thumbnails of selected documents; you can double-click on a page thumbnail to open that PDF at that page. The Organizer also lets you trace your usage history to make it easy to recall recently viewed PDFs within preset time-frames, and even trace back online PDFs you only viewed through Safari but never downloaded. PDFs can be grouped into virtual Collections within the Organizer. We think the Organizer is great.

We love the redesigned PDF Optimizer, too. Under Acrobat 6, this is a rough-and-ready method of stripping away unwanted content from a PDF and expanding compatibility to older versions of the program, thus producing a smaller file. In Acrobat 7, this is better presented, and you can name and save each of your optimisation settings for re-use. Our only disappointment is that PDF Optimizer settings aren't copied into Acrobat Distiller's PDF Settings, or vice versa. Still, it's refreshing to discover you can switch between any of Distiller's PDF Settings from within any application's Print dialog: just select the Adobe PDF virtual printer (created automatically when you install Acrobat) and pick your preferred PDF Setting from the PDF Options screen.

In addition to these notable new features, Acrobat 7 Professional has many background improvements and enhanced support for external file formats and technologies. The new version of the PDF format (1.6) allows you to add any type of external file as an attachment, which is embedded within the PDF for portability but can be listed, viewed and extracted at any time. PDF 1.6 also supports the emerging industry standard for cross-application 3D animated graphics (U3D). Preparing PDFs and even the Acrobat program itself for use by the physically impaired is a breeze thanks to the Accessibility Setup Assistant.

Print production staff can take advantage of more visual warnings within the Output Preview window. As well sorting out separation inks, it can now also identify excessive ink coverage, overprints, gamut problems and 'rich' blacks. Preflight profiles can be protected with passwords, and packaged and shared with colleagues. The Preflighter can be used to create and verify PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 documents, too. Most interesting of all, the Print Production toolbar lets you carry out a variety of tasks, from fixing hairlines and adding printer marks to managing ink densities and converting inks using ICC profiles. You can even build and customise JDF 1.1 and 1.2 job definitions for projects, although we were unable to test this feature.

Unfortunately, there are also a number of features that are part of the Windows edition of Acrobat 7 but unavailable to Mac users. These include the ability to import PDF comments back into original Microsoft Word documents, automatic conversion of Excel cell comments to PDF comments, and support for PowerPoint object transparency. One of the best features of the Acrobat package is Adobe Designer, a utility for designing PDF, HTML and XML forms, but, again, this is for Windows users only.

Acrobat 7 is a cracking good upgrade, but Adobe has yet again missed the opportunity to prove to Mac users that they aren't second-class customers.