Kurt Foss
The noted usability guru strays outside his area of expertise once again in a new "Alertbox" column denigrating any uses of
PDF other than printing. We can't help but wonder -- due to the silliness of some of his comments and suggestions -- whether
he's being serious. We're afraid he is. Nonetheless, to show our respect, we've christened a special Google Advanced Search setting in his honor.
Kurt Foss
Jakob Nielsen hit a nerve with some PDF enthusiasts when he recently wrote in his monthly usability column that, in terms of suitability for use on the Web, the format is allegedly "unfit for human consumption." We're publishing a rebuttal that another satisfied user recently sent to Nielsen -- and also shared with us. In addition, Steve Borsch provides several samples of PDFs designed to be read and navigated online.
Kurt Foss
As he did two years when Jakob Nielsen published his first Alertbox column alleging that PDFs were unsuitable for Web use, Adobe Robert McDaniels offers a thoughtful rebuttal to last week's Alertbox column in which Nielsen opines that PDFs are supposedly "unfit for human consumption."
Douglas J. Alford
After reading the sometimes laughable criticisms of PDF made in a recent "Alertbox" column by noted usability guru Jakob Nielsen, Doug Alford of Techneglas came up with a humorous spoof. We're delighted to share his "CARS: Unfit for Human Transportation" take-off on Nielsen's ill-informed "PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption" column.
Kurt Foss
Adobe Acrobat and PDF officially turned 10 years of age this past Sunday, June 15 -- Father's Day, quite appropriately. Former Adobe CEO and co-founder John Warnock is widely and rightly credited as being the 'father of Acrobat and PDF.' In the years since the technology was publicly launched in mid-1993, the software and format have had a number of other mentors and guiding spirits who have continued to nurture and build on the original concept. One of those is Bob Wulff, who was lured by Warnock in a hallway encounter in 1990 to lend some technical assistance to the fledgling project 'for a couple weeks.' More than a dozen years later, Wulff has become not only one of the firm believers, but also one of the main keepers of the faith. We talked with him early this week to discuss the recent technological milestone and his role in it.
Kurt Foss
This Thursday morning at the Seybold PDF Summit in Amsterdam, Adobe's James C. King will deliver a keynote that reflects on the "twists and turns that Acrobat and PDF have taken" during the past decade. We caught up with King shortly before he caught a flight to Europe to talk about his upcoming talk, about some of his past presentations on related themes -- including a still-relevant 1998 primer on 'what's inside a PDF' -- and about his work as A Principal Scientist for Adobe Systems. Planet PDF is a co-sponsor of the Seybold PDF Summit.
Martin Bailey
In late May, the most recent revisions of the PDF/X standards -- prepress-oriented subsets of PDF -- were approved, and new tools for authoring and verifying the newly named PDF/X-1a:2001 & PDF/X-3:2002 are expected to become available soon. Martin Bailey of Global Graphics, chair of the PDF/X standards committee, provides this timely update.
Shlomo Perets
In the latest in his ongoing series of 'PDF Best Practices' articles, Shlomo Perets of MicroType.com explores and explains issues related to the use of graphics in PDF files -- a matter of compromises and trade-offs.
Dan Shea
With the news of Adobe Reader 6.0 still hot off the presses, Planet PDF takes a first look at the new application. Along with providing some first impressions, we'll also offer some insights into the changes and updates that current users can expect.
We've developed a very simple Active Server Pages (ASP) script which allows you to do no-nonsense Forms Data Format (FDF) collection via e-mail. Best of all, this simple script will work with Acrobat Reader.
Kurt Foss
Earlier this month we had the chance to catch up with Dov Isaacs of Adobe Systems to talk about his 'day job' as "Principal Scientist, Workflow and Interoperability," as well as about his highly commendable efforts online as a tireless troubleshooter for end-user problems and issues related to the company's software products.
Kurt Foss
One of three original members of the initial Acrobat team at Adobe Systems and now Director of Acrobat Product Marketing, Sarah Rosenbaum has left her mark on Acrobat versions 1.0 to 6.0. Likewise, Acrobat and PDF have left their impressions on her. In an interview with Planet PDF, she says the worldwide "awareness and proliferation is so mind-boggling."
Karl De Abrew
Today Karl talks with John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems, retired CEO and current Chairman of the Board -- and perhaps most significantly in this venue, the mastermind behind Adobe Acrobat and the Portable Document Format (PDF). In his 1991 "Camelot" report, later published on Planet PDF, Warnock publicly detailed for the first time the foundation for and concept of PDF. The rest, as they say, is history -- and a rich one it is.
Karl De Abrew
Planet PDF talks with David Zwang, a highly regarded systems and process analyst with Zwang and Company, long-time moderator for the PDF-oriented sessions at the Seybold Seminars' conferences and other similar industry events, a contributing editor on Acrobat and PDF for The Seybold Report and a contributing writer for several other industry publications.
David Zwang
In this re-published perspective, David Zwang explains why he believes the Portable Document Format (PDF) has become a universal format for publishing.
