Editorial Reviews:
PDF--to most of the world it stands for that rather tiresome format used for documents downloaded from the web. Slow to load and slower to print, hopelessly unsearchable, and all but impossible to cut and paste from, the Portable Document Format doesn't inspire much affection in the average user. But PDFs done right is another story. Those who know the ins and outs of this format know that it can be much more than electronic paper. Flexible, compact, interactive, and even searchable, PDF is the ideal way to present content across multiple platforms. PDF Hacks unveils the true promise of Portable Document Format, going way beyond the usual PDF as paged output mechanism. PDF expert Sid Steward draws from his years of analyzing, extending, authoring, and embellishing PDF documents to present 100 clever hacks--tools, tips, quick-and-dirty or not-so-obvious solutions to common problems. PDF Hacks will show you how to create PDF documents that are far more powerful than simple representations of paper pages. The hacks in the book cover the full range of PDF functionality, from the simple to the more complex, including generating, manipulating, annotating, and consuming PDF information. You'll learn how to manage content in PDF, navigate it, and reuse it as necessary. Far more than another guide to Adobe Acrobat, the book covers a variety of readily available tools for generating, deploying, and editing PDF. The little-known tips and tricks in this book are ideal for anyone who works with PDF on a regular basis, including web developers, pre-press users, forms creators, and those who generate PDF for distribution. Whether you want to fine-tune and debug your existing PDF documents or explore the full potential the format offers, PDF Hacks will turn you into a PDF power user.
Customer Reviews:
Displaying 1 to 5 of 11 total reviews (Page 1 of 3):
 Great Book!!!
This book is a god-send for those of us who have to struggle with the often frustrating world of PDF documents on our computers. I was completely confused until I dug into this manual, which is relatively easy for a novice to understand. It has been a great help to me in find answers to problems I had with using PDF on a daily basis. I would highly recommend it.  unique resource for the technically gifted
There are several categories of hack in this book; two of them are "saving money" (finding ways to work with PDF's outside of Acrobat) and PDF in web design--using CGI scripting to serve up individual pages that have search text for example. A third type of hack are some old-school tricks that help make your PDF's more widely compatible. Good stuff, not crucial unless you happen to need it.  Sucker born every day & 2 to take him
The title is completely misleading.
I purchased this book and software from Broderbund, after reading the reviews posted here at Amazon, believing the book and software would help me covert PDF files that I could not Save or print in its orginal format into ones I could.
I can say for sure,in my opinion, the other reviews of this book led me down the "fools primrose path."
Perhaps I should have read the reviews more carefully.
Of course the fault is entirely mine. Contains very useful tips and tricks for PDF users
This is a very comprehensive solutions catalog on all kinds of PDF related issues. Each trick is described with step-by-step instructions and contains pointers to relevant resources. The chapter listing categorizes the hacks - Consuming PDF, Managing a Collection, Authoring and Self-Publishing, Creating PDF and Other Editions, Manipulating PDF files, Dynamic PDF, Scripting and Programming Acrobat.
I embrace the beauty of PDF as an end user and applications developer, but do not use Adobe Acrobat. Many of the tricks mentioned in the book is about this product. A problem is that the TOC does not tell whether or not a trick is Adobe Acrobat specific. Some of the hacks are like sections extracted from an advanced Adobe Acrobat user guide. As this is not obvious from the TOC, the content of the hack can be quite different from what I expected.
Despite this problem, the book is still a very useful one-stop resource about PDF. I will recommend this book to all who need to use or work with PDF.
I could have used this book on several occassions
With PDF files everywhere from web sites to help files, sooner or later you will run into a situation where you need to do something to a PDF file. For me the first time I realized I needed to do something I could not was when I needed to take one and convert it to a Word format so I could quickly outline the high points to study for a certification exam. After several hours I finally got it into a text file thanks to a web site that did the conversion. But even then I lost the tables, illustrations, etc. How to do that is one of the hacks included in this book. I wish it were printed a few years ago because it would have made my life easier.
After testing that hack I browsed through the book and kept finding myself asking "You can do that with a PDF file?" There are a lot of good tips in this book from making Acrobat startup faster, to converting PDF files, to automatic timed scrolling for easy reading, to creating a PDF using Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, Perl, HTML, PHP, and Java. With page after page of coding, this is a tremendously useful book for anyone who wants to create or edit PDF files or change the way Acrobat works with files. PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools is very highly recommended and will be put on my shelf reserved for books I want to be able to access quickly. More Customer Reviews:
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