Acrobat.com Part 2…
So last night we covered Buzzword and some other generalities of Acrobat.com. Now we are going to move on to Tables and Presentations. I feel like Adobe started off very strong with a product call Buzzword. They follow that up with products named Tables and Presentations. I feel like those names are very weak. However, I will also note that both of these products are still in the Adobe Labs, meaning they are still adding features and other stuff to them. Perhaps when they graduate to full-on products they will get cool little monikers.
Tables aka ‘PowerGrid (TM)’
Adobe marketing department, lend me your ears: Name this product PowerGrid and then toss me a few bucks for my troubles. And don’t worry, I’ve got a suggestion for Presentations as well. Look for that further down the page.
Now, The Digitante is probably one of the few people around who use Microsoft Excel enough to have a laundry list of complaints a mile long.
One of my biggest complaints has always been Excel’s locking of in-use files. I understand that if two people were editing a file at the same time, very bad things could happen. However, a forward-thinking, innovative company would figure out a way that two people could work in harmony on one file:
- Show cells being edited in glowing red.
- Lock only the page the other person is working one.
- Have screen sharing.
Instead, you end up with a file that is locked and can’t be used until the idiot two cubes over gets back to his desk and closes the file he was working on before he headed off for lunch an hour ago. Or sometime you get extra lucky and end up with a file that is locked even though no one is using it. How does THAT happen?
Adobe addressed this issue in their new offerings. The focus of these products is collaboration. In order to aid that, they included a bar at the bottom of each product that shows who is allowed to work on or view each document. Standard disclaimer that some of the following pictures may have been taken from the Acrobat.com product guide or from the site itself.
As you can see, you can click the “Share” button to add other users and you can see each person’s status. The dot next to their name will be yellow if they are currently viewing it and it will be red if they are currently editing it. The switch between viewing and editing is seamless as it indicates editing when you start typing and viewing about 2 second after you finish.
The roles for users consist of Co-Authors who have editing privileges, Reviewers who can comment, and Readers who can only read the document.
Another simple task that is turned into a terrible chore in Excel is inserting a row or a column. Unless you have added a toolbar button (and even that is still way up top), you are required to click in a cell, right click for the context menu, click on ‘Insert…’, click on row, and click Ok. In Tables, you click the cell and click the + sign on the start of the row. 5 vs. 2 is a huge improvement.
The view tool is also pretty cool. When collaborating on a spreadsheet, you can create your own views. These views are created using filters. When you create those views, they don’t affect any other users viewing the documents. An excellent example of this feature would be sharing a document with data about various regions during a ConnectNow session (Adobe’s online conference tool). Each regional manager could have his own private view up, filtered for his region.
Presentations aka ‘ElectricSlide (TM)’
Unfortunately, at this point, Presentations is really missing that killer feature that the other products have such as image manipulation and page layout in Buzzword and private view in Tables. As I mentioned before, this is still in it’s Labs phase and may be more fleshed out when it becomes more official.
Two big upsides for Presentations:
- There are tons of beautiful, eye-catching themes and color schemes.
- When you toss videos into a presentation, they are saved as Flash movies and are guaranteed to play. No dead links, no wrong format errors.
Overall impressions?
I think Adobe is on the right path. They have really tried to get some innovation into some products that Microsoft has been entrenched in for years with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. The innovation pays off for the end user by making Adobe’s products more usable.
On the other hand, Adobe has their work cut out for them. As great as I think their products are, it has to be tough to try and step into an arena with Goliaths like Google and Microsoft who have been working hard on their office productivity offerings.
I’ll mention again, if you think Acrobat.com might be a useful tool and you want to try it out. Or if you are currently using Acrobat.com and have had positive or negative experiences, I’d love to know that as well. I would be more than happy to post your thoughts here on the site for the world to see. You can always contact The Digitante through the About page or you can click over to the right on the Google Voice widget.
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