Adobe® Acrobat® 8 PDF Bible

Chapter 4. Getting Familiar with Adobe Reader

IN THIS CHAPTER

• The Adobe Reader welcome screen

• Setting some important preferences

• Understanding Adobe Reader tools

• Working with enabled PDF files

• Getting Help in Adobe Reader

• Getting more Adobe Reader solutions from Adobe Systems

• Features lost in Adobe Reader 8

As a PDF author you need to be aware of the capabilities and the limitations of the Adobe Reader software. In some situations you can distribute PDF documents to users of the free Adobe Reader software for active participation in your workflow without all your clients and colleagues needing to purchase the full version of Acrobat Standard or Acrobat Professional. In other situations where the Adobe Reader software does not contain tools or commands to properly edit a file for a given workflow, you may need to recommend to others which commercial viewer they need to purchase. Regardless of where you are with PDF creation and editing, at one time or another you'll be called upon to explain some of the differences between the viewers.

Adobe Reader has matured as a product and the newest release offers users much more functionality than any previous version. Features that have long been requested by users such as being able to save form data and add digital signatures are now available in Adobe Reader 8. However, the features are document-specific and require at least one person in a workflow attempting to use these new tools to author a file in Acrobat 8 Professional.

This chapter covers ...