Product Reviews

Acrobat's greatest strength is flexibility. But that also leads to its greatest weakness: complexity. With Acrobat 8 Professional, Adobe finally attempts to tackle the problem. The interface has been redesigned, with more space devoted to Acrobat's main job - displaying documents. However, some of the new icons are inscrutable and there are still 15 toolbars to choose from, with a bizarre mix of icon and drop-down commands.

There is, at least, more focus on the key areas of PDF. The new Getting Started panel helps, dividing the program's capabilities into eight main categories - Create PDF, Combine Files, Export, Start Meeting, Secure, Sign, Forms and Review & Comment - which also form the basis for the redesigned main toolbar. It's a start, but Adobe just can't stop itself - click through one of the options and you're bombarded with a mess of explanatory text, graphics and links.

Acrobat 8's new features also fall into these eight major categories. When it comes to creating PDFs, there are new options for directly converting AutoCAD files, for optimising scanned documents and for creating PDFs from scratch. More usefully, the integration with office applications has been extended with support for automatic archiving of email messages in Outlook and Lotus Notes, one-button PDF creation in Excel and PowerPoint, and the ability to convert Word mail merges to PDFs.

This version rethinks the way multiple PDFs can be combined with a new Combine Files dialog, the ability to save header and footer presets, and support for Bates numbering. More importantly, Acrobat 8 now lets you combine files that still remain separate. The resulting "PDF packages" use a new navigation panel that lists all component files, from where you can search the current, selected or all documents. Disappointingly, though, backwards compatibility is awkward, and the end user will need to download the latest Adobe Reader 8 (all 21MB of it) to

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handle PDF packages.

In terms of security, the new Examine Document command lets you see and remove hidden content, such as metadata, bookmarks and annotations. There's also a new Redaction toolbar that allows you to mark up elements to be permanently removed from the PDF - you can even search for sensitive text and mark it for removal, although the whole process is convoluted. If you're signing off your document, there's a new Preview mode that suppresses dynamic content that might otherwise change and support for a new system of roaming IDs. For the author, there's the ability to set seed values to control a user's choices when signing and, crucially, the option to enable signing capabilities for users of Adobe Reader 7 onwards.

For form handling, a new version of the separate, dedicated LiveCycle Designer is included. This now lets you import an existing PDF as a background over which you can add form fields either automatically or manually. You can also now manage the distribution of forms, while the existing Review Tracker dialog lets you keep a record of the forms you've filled in yourself.

For commenting and reviewing, Acrobat 8 sees the previously separate toolbars combined and now highlights selected comments when zoomed out. Otherwise, the main focus is on shared, web-hosted reviews, which allow all comments to be centrally pooled and viewed as they're added. It doesn't require any server software: comments are automatically retrieved and users notified, and users of the free Reader program can now be allowed to join in.

If you want to go a stage further and collaborate on a document in real-time, click on the new Start Meeting command. Expectations were high around this integration between PDF and Flash, but don't get too excited. In practice, you're essentially just using Acrobat as a route to loading your own dedicated Acrobat Connect meeting space URL. To arrange meetings of over 15 people, you'll have to buy a licence.

This is the last straw. As it stands, apart from the new niche digital signing, form handling and shared review aspects of the free Adobe Reader, there are very few compelling reasons to upgrade. What's more, many of the new features and interface changes end up adding to the program's existing bloat and over-complexity. To top it all, the online Help is a work in progress and we also found the program to be buggy. It's surprising Adobe signed off the program in this state - currently, Acrobat 8 Professional simply doesn't meet our expectations.