Acrobat 8 News: INTERVIEW With Lonn Lorenz, Acrobat 8 Product Manager

On Tuesday, November 7 I had the opportunity to discuss the new Acrobat 8 with Lonn Lorenz, Acrobat 8 Product Manager at Adobe Systems.

By the time I talked with Lonn Lorenz, I had already had some experience with Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional through working with the beta and now the gold master versions. It’s a different beast than Acrobat 7 in several respects (see my upcoming review to learn more), and these are what I keyed in on in my questions with Mr. Lorenz. Here’s some key details I learned:

Figure 1: Acrobat 8′s new “Getting Started” interface.

The “Getting Started” interface was added to Acrobat 8 due to customer feedback. It’s the first thing you see when you launch Acrobat 8: the “Getting Started” screen (Figure 1) with various options for starting work in the application. I’m not a big fan of the design—the icons are sharp but the design is relatively plain, and all-caps Helvetica at the top is weak typography by most standards—but the screen is helpful and gets users into a new and expanded application quickly and easily. It is reminiscent to me of the various wizards and intro screens you find in Microsoft Office applications and other consumer software. Lorenz told me the decision to use the “Getting Started” screen was based on customer feedback, and that it will benefit most users in Acrobat’s large user base since elements such as collaborative conferencing, security and exporting are necessary functions for both corporate users and creative professionals.

Where did the new look and feel of Acrobat 8 come from? Will we see it in CS3? Your guess is as good as mine. You’ll notice right away that Acrobat 8 incorporates a lot more of that white-on-gray/white-on-black interface design made ubiquitous by Apple and their creative pro applications. I asked Lorenz if Apple’s success and style made enough of an impact on Adobe—known for leading the way in good interface designs—to affect its interface designs in the here and now. I didn’t get any details into how it was decided to change the style, however. I was even less successful when I asked if Creative Suite 3 would adopt a similar interface redesign: Lorenz didn’t have any information on what the CS3 development team might be cooking up for us in 2007. If it does move toward the Apple style, I’ll be okay with it but slightly disappointed.

There is a reason why page measurements aren’t displayed all the time. The complaint I hear most about Acrobat 7 is that page measurements aren’t displayed permanently in the lower-left corner—you have to mouse over the corner in order to see them. Measurements used to be a permanent fixture in that area of the window. I expected measurements to return to Acrobat 8, but they do not—though now you only have to put your cursor in the lower-left quadrant of the window to see them. I asked Lorenz why we didn’t see a return to permanent measurements, and I learned that even though Adobe heard the complaint periodically and knew it to be an issue there were others who asked for a cleaner interface—which makes a lot of sense given Acrobat’s large toolset. In Lorenz’ words, the Acrobat team strives to put “the right things for everybody” on users’ screens, and content is king. Secondary information such as measurements are made hidden but easily accessible, which they feel is appropriate for most users, and Lorenz did say users who are shown the ease of obtaining the measurements are okay with the change. My experience is similar: with Acrobat 7 I had to mouse over that corner quite precisely in order to get the measurement info that I always seem to need; in Acrobat 8, a quick snap of the mouse in the general direction is all it takes—and it works.

Acrobat 8 offers good control over PDF conversion—but you have to know where to look. The PDF package is one of Acrobat 8′s highly touted features—create one document containing multiple PDFs (with multiple security settings). What I like even more—and what is not so highly touted—is that you can package pretty much any kind of file including InDesign files, graphics and HTML. Acrobat 8 converts the files to PDF during the packaging process. It’s a wonderful processing feature—but there’s only three conversion settings (see Figure 2) and it surprised me since Adobe has been making it easy to use presets and standards—such as PDF/X-1a—for years now. What I learned from Mr. Lorenz is that the PDF package settings are something of a supplement to the PDF conversions settings you’ll find in the application’s preferences (Acrobat 7 has this as well). There you can specify the preset to be used for various files (InDesign, HTML, PNG, TIFF, PostScript, etc.) and trump it down the pipeline with the PDF package settings if need be. It seems complex to me—if I could synchronize all of Acrobat’s functions with a preset, I would—but workable.

Figure 2: Creating a PDF Package with Acrobat 8.

Acrobat Connect is the new wave in Adobe’s definition of collaboration. Acrobat Connect is cool—an integration of Macromedia technologies (Flash, Breeze) in order to create real-time PDF collaboration. I asked Mr. Lorenz what Adobe’s vision for future collaboration was, and he responded with a comparison of Acrobat versions 7 and 8. In version 7, one could send a file for review; in version 8, one can not only send the file but share the review—everyone sees everyone else’s comments through a shared file—or use Acrobat Connect to collaborate live via the Internet. The usefulness of this extends not just to PDF review and collaboration but even to presentations and other collaborative functions. And it’s cross-platform—which is what the industry is moving to anyway now that Macs run Windows and use Intel chips. By the end I likened Adobe’s vision of collaboration to one where there basically is no computer or no technology—collaboration in the future, though done electronically, would be as transparent as if the collaborators were sitting around a table face-to-face. Lorenz agreed that this emulation of real human collaboration is Adobe’s goal.

The holy grail of preflighting in Acrobat 8: correction and automation. Preflighting has become a strong tool in Acrobat 8. In past versions it’s been clunky, unintuitive and daunting. The addition of preflight droplets, an improved interface and easy-to-comprehend results makes Acrobat 8′s preflighting tools a lot more helpful. I asked Lorenz what was Adobe’s goal this time around for preflight, and he replied that not only was improved correction capabilities the end goal, but to do it in an automated way. For Acrobat to be able to identify elements in a PDF, refer to preset rules (such as conversion of RGB color and adjustment of hairlines), then execute, modify and save the PDF was the goal. I think Adobe succeeded with this one: working with the preflight dialog box was a breeze compared to earlier versions, and I loved that I could repair a PDF as easily as preflighting it. I do think the interface could continue to improve in terms of simplicity, but it works pretty well.

You’ll never edit a PDF like you edit a Word document. I asked if we would ever edit a PDF file in the same way we edit native files; I asked this because more and more products are out there that can alter PDF files, and even Acrobat continues to add editing capabilities (such as the preflight repair functions). I even had a client this year wonder aloud why in the heck an Adobe PDF wasn’t as editable as the Word documents he was used to. Lorenz said that, even though the editing tools are out there for certain tasks and editing depends on the content and what you need to change, there is no full text engine (such as InDesign’s) incorporated within Acrobat and there are no plans to include such an engine.

Adobe is actively building JDF to be embraced by creative professionals, in the same way they embraced PDF. JDF (Job Definition Format) is a technology that basically synchronizes important information about a project and its files (such as PDF) and ensures that printers and designers alike will have all the information needed to design and produce a piece without errors. It’s been around for at least a couple years or so now; however, I’ve never seen it used. In contrast, PDF is used everywhere after a few years where it didn’t enter designers’ collective consciousness as a file format that would be useful for high-quality output. I asked Lorenz how JDF would be nurtured to the point where it could stand alongside PDF as an essential technology, and he replied that it’s actually the printing industry that will bring JDF to the attention of designers. JDF is already integrated into printers’ systems and OEMs—some are using it now, others are not. Currently designers who use JDF (if they do at all) use it just to store project information—but Adobe’s vision is to use it to automate what designers do when they prepare files for printing. With JDF information supplied by a printer, for instance, a designer wouldn’t even need to worry about having RGB color—the technology would manage the needed conversions in accordance with hte JDF data. Lorenz said designers do not quite get JDF yet, but they will—once the idea of using it migrates from the printing industry. It goes hand-in-hand with the Adobe PDF Print Engine, announced months ago as a way for printers to print with native PDF files without the necessary conversion to PostScript.

Promoting a product that’s many things to many people can be tough. I told Lorenz I love Acrobat 8′s new Booklet Printing feature—which basically imposes pages for printing with a single click—but it was buried in the application and not mentioned in the general list of new features! This illustrates a major challenge with Acrobat: unlike some other applications (like Illustrator or InDesign), Acrobat has a wide variety of uses with an even wider variety of customers. Corporate enterprises, creative professionals and other professionals all want Acrobat features that would do wonders for their work. Of course, the Print Production tools have no real use for an accountant in the same way I won’t ever need to use Acrobat 8′s new Redaction tools to eliminate sensitive content from my PDFs. So how does Adobe decide what to include in Acrobat, and what to promote? Lorenz admitted it’s a difficult problem. The key, he said, are the features such as Acrobat Connect that benefit a large number of users. It’s features like this that get included in the application and get promoted like crazy. Others—like Booklet Printing, I suppose—fulfill a need for less users and so isn’t necessarily promoted even though it’s included in response to users’ requests. Questions such as, “How many users are requesting this feature?” and “What would it take to include a feature like this?” are questions the Acrobat product team asks themselves before deciding how much time and effort should be devoted to a new feature and its promotion.

My discussion with Mr. Lorenz was illuminating, and I was very glad to get this insight into how the applications I use every day are developed. Acrobat 8 Professional is out now—as is Creative Suite 2.3—and I will be publishing my review shortly.

ABOUT LONN LORENZ

Lonn Lorenz has a 15+ year history in graphic arts, publishing, and printing. His experience has ranged from traditional editorial and publishing, to prepress and print—from typesetting through the desktop publishing revolution of today. In 1999, Lonn took a position at Adobe Systems working on PDF technologies. His last role was as a Senior Marketing Manager on the CreativePro Infrastructure Team, managing the cross-product development of programs and resources for print service providers worldwide. Currently he is a Product Manager working on the Adobe Creative Suite, especially around InDesign, Acrobat, print and PDF workflows and features.