PDF Hacks

Chapter 2. Managing a Collection

Introduction: Hacks #15-23

While you'll often work with individual PDF files, documents have a way of accumulating. As your collection of PDF files grows, finding things in that collection often becomes more difficult. These hacks will show you ways to work with groups of documents, adding features and creating supporting frameworks for managing multiple documents.

Hack #15. Bookmark PDF Pages in Reader

Create and maintain a list of PDF pages for rapid access.

Web browsers enable you to bookmark HTML pages, so why doesn't Adobe Reader enable you to bookmark PDF pages? Here is a JavaScript that extends Reader so that it can create bookmarks to specific PDF pages. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Tip

The bookmarks created by this JavaScript aren't PDF bookmarks that get saved with the document. They behave more like web browser bookmarks in that they enable you to quickly return to a specific PDF page.

Bookmark JavaScript for Acrobat and Reader

Visit http://www.pdfhacks.com/bookmark_page/ to download the JavaScript in Example 2-1. Unzip it, and then copy it into your Acrobat or Reader JavaScripts directory. [Hack #96] explains where to find this directory on your platform. Restart Acrobat/Reader, and bookmark_page.js will add new items to your View menu.

Example 2-1. Adding bookmark functionality to Acrobat and Adobe Reader

// bookmark_page.js, ver. 1.0 // visit: http://www.pdfhacks.com/bookmark_page/ // use this delimiter for serializing our array ...