Adobe Acrobat: Addition by Subtraction

Less is More: Adobe Acrobat X (aka 10) has been launched, with a significant revamp of the menu bar, cutting choices in half to five. Ernest Svenson, in his PDF for Lawyers blog, explains that the upgrade now offers "File, Edit, View, Window, and Help" options, jettisoning "Document, Comments, Forms, Tools, and Advanced" buttons.

   "At first this was unsettling, but once I grasped what Adobe was doing I realized that the user-intervace change will be helpful to people who are new to Acrobat, says Svenson, a New Orleans-based solo practitioner and member of LTN's Editorial Advisory Board.

And the advanced choices weren't sent to the recycle bin, they have simply been moved to the toolbar on the right side, he says. His post offers visuals of the changes.

Other improvements, he says, include better OCR capabilities, better compression of color documents, and "significantly improved export of .pdfs to Microsoft Word and Excel formats.

Related Stories: Washington Post/PC World,

Acrobat for Legal Professionals blog.