Adobe® Acrobat® 5 PDF Bible

Rating:
Summary: Ample reference
Review: Although I enjoy reading reference books (yes, I need a life) I found this one to be rather dry. Acrobat is a powerful application and version 5 is actually quite fun to use, but I didn't find this book particularly insightful about things I didn't already know about Acrobat. Still, I refer to this book occasionally when I become forgetful, and for that I will keep this on my desk, at the ready. If you've tinkered with Acrobat and you're ready to become more of a power user, this book will get you up to speed with little pain.

Rating:
Summary: Adobe Acrobat 5 PDF Bible
Review: I am an ACE in Acrobat. This book is a 4 star+. Ted did an excellent job in building what he started in the last book. Acrobat is so much more powerful than 95% of the people realize. This book reveals most of the power in a very organized fashion. This is a necessity for anyone that works with Acrobat.

Rating:
Summary: The best reference manual for Adobe Acrobat to date...
Review: I am an Adobe Certified Expert / Adobe Certified Training Provider and have been training individuals and corporate groups nationwide on Adobe Acrobat since version 3.0. The evolution of Adobe Acrobat throughout the years has been truly amazing and the need for comprehensive reference manuals to explain features and workflows are a necessity as this product continues to evolve.

Ted Padova's Adobe Acrobat 5 PDF Bible meets the needs of users at all levels. It has an indepth section covering the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader (for the majority of people in the world) as well detailed sections covering all the major components of the full version - Distiller, Acrobat (and its multitude of plugins), and Catalog. I believe the book is well-organized and has many great workflow ideas as well as tips and techniques to give even the most savvy user new ideas.

To counter those who give this reference manual a low score I suggest that they become better acquainted with the product by first using Adobe Acrobat 5.0 Classroom in a Book (CIB). After you have completed the self-paced lessons in the CIB, PDF Bible will seem less overwhelming.

My only complaint with this manual is that there are a few errors in terms of labeling the application window for Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and since this book was written during the beta phase for Adobe Acrobat 5.0, it misses out on some of the new developments from Adobe - new plugins, Adobe Acrobat Approval, Adobe Acrobat Distiller Server, Adobe Acrobat Messenger, and Adobe Document Server. For those who wish to learn more about these products, just visit Adobe's website and click on the Products link.

Rating:
Summary: This book is as difficult to use as the Adobe program
Review: I have basic Acrobat PDF skills and was looking for a Sam's Learn Acrobat in 24 hours or Acrobat for Dummies type book, but not one of those really fluffy, basic, picture story books. This is the closest I could find and it isn't close. Disappointing - crammed and densely packed with information, I found this book difficult to navigate and use, and similar to using Acrobat itself--so you might as well just muddle through the program and its help files directly rather than muddle through this book. It may be good for mature intermediate or advanced Adobe practitioners as a reference or review, but if you're looking for a teach yourself book along the lines of the SAMs, ...for Dummies, or the Microsoft press books, my suggestion is don't bother with this Acrobat PDF Bible. I'll try to avoid using Acrobat until SAMs or some other publisher comes out with a self-teaching guide.

Rating:
Summary: Less padding, more accurate detail please
Review: I'm also an Acrobat ACE, and was looking forward to reading what was billed as 'the definitive book on the subject'.

In fact I was more than a little disappointed: the book has a definite feel of being 'padded out' with unnecessary information and repetition, and despite its size I felt that some areas were skimmed over.

I note that the author's range of expertise is quite wide, which might explain why I got the impression that the author knew more about the theory of the product than the practicals. In particular, he makes the serious mistake of assuming that in Acrobat 5 the job settings for distilling are shared between the Distiller app itself and the Distiller Printer driver.

In fact, they are entirely separate; this was a (major) change from Acrobat 4, and the fact that he has not picked up on this major feature made me begin to question some of his other pronouncements.

Rather than quibble about a number of other small errors I noticed, I would make the general comment that Mr Padova is not great at explaining concepts. While reading his rather turgid prose, I was thinking to myself that if I - as a certified Acrobat person - was having to re-read paragraphs, a new user dipping into the text was going to have problems.

Bit of a curate's egg - too dense for the new or average user, and falls short of being the Bible that an advanced user requires.

Rating:
Summary: Who will use it?
Review: Just Ok.....You can glean a lot from reading the Adobe help pdf first....Since there is no other book on Acrobat 5, I give it 2 stars...If you are looking to really learn Acrobat, be ready to devoted hours, days, weeks, months, years to be a really good user. To just casually use Acrobat, you don't need the book. And if you're up to par, you don't need it either.

Rating:
Summary: Just What I Needed
Review: The author did a great job of putting together a comprehensive reference guide for Acrobat 5. Its been very useful to me when I needed further clarification on a particular topic. The information set forth in the book is complete, organized and helpful! However, the index is definitely lacking and could have been a lot better. The index is not very comprehensive at all, making it difficult to actually find what I am looking for. Overall, I recommend this to anyone looking for a good Acrobat 5 reference guide.