Tuesday, November 04, 2008

JDF video found on Adobe website

I have been trying to find out about an online video resource to explain the JDF options in Acrobat. An earlier one found on YouTube is now no longer available. The Acrobat users events may cover this but I missed the sound on a recent broadcast and the agenda seems to be heading towards Flash for knowledge workers. My guess is that most people in offices still require print sometimes, so the JDF intent feature would be interesting.

A recent blog post alerted me to a list of CS4 videos and through this I found a video on JDF for CS3. Start here then follow Indesign - Exporting and Publishing - Creating JDF job definitions. (Can't find a direct link, right click just gets "about Flash" etc etc)

The odd thing is that new features like export to Flash have got links from the blog, the JDF is just in a list of videos you may like to find. My guess is that most people who use InDesign are mostly interested in printed pages. The JDF from Acrobat feature is almost never explained.

I am beginning to think that Adobe are slightly desperate to move everything into Flash. They may think Adobe Classic - Postscript and PDF etc, documents as we know them - is about to be so widely available that the margins will vanish. The Acrobat Users broadcast for the UK recently promoted the Flash intro way of presenting a menu in a portfolio. Personally I still think the text list is ok and see no reason to force people I snd a portfolio into upgrading just to get past the menu. On Buzzword I find it is just annoying the way the icons for each person sharing the document chanbge shape and display of text information. This style may be fun on a Mac when you only need one software at a time but if you are trying to maintain a list then a boring old text box is easier to follow.

So not sure if I am off topic yet. My main interest remains in Adobe Classic, even as there are several other sources for this sort of application. Adobe Flash, what I used to call Adobe Max, is not so essential. It may be interesting later but my suggestion to Adobe would be to remember what the current customers thought they were interested in to start with.