- Paperback: 280 pages
- Publisher: Adobe Press; 1 edition (May 3 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0321172388
- ISBN-13: 978-0321172389
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 17.8 x 1.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 422 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #521,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
Book Description
Unlike other books on JavaScript, which explain how to write JavaScript programs for the Web, Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript is the first and only book to explain how to use JavaScript to create sophisticated, interactive documents in Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat expert John Deubert teaches JavaScript programming basics in the context of carrying out specific, useful tasks in Acrobat. For example, you¿ll learn how to manipulate Acrobat with JavaScript to perform calculations, retrieve data from a database, process form data, and more. And each tutorial is broken down into small, manageable chunks so as not to overwhelm you with long blocks of code. A one-of-a kind book, Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript is a great resource for anyone who wants to gain more control over Adobe¿s extremely popular Acrobat software.
From the Back Cover
Unlike other books on JavaScript, which explain how to write JavaScript programs for the Web, JavaScript for Adobe Acrobat is the first and only book to explain how to use JavaScript to create sophisticated, interactive documents in Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat expert John Deubert teaches JavaScript programming basics in the context of carrying out specific, useful tasks in Acrobat. For example, you'll learn how to manipulate Acrobat with JavaScript to perform calculations, retrieve data from a database, process form data, and more. And each tutorial is broken down into small, manageable chunks so as not to overwhelm you with long blocks of code. A one-of-a kind book, JavaScript for Adobe Acrobat is a great resource for anyone who wants to gain more control over Adobe's extremely popular Acrobat software.
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great!,
By
This review is from: Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript (Paperback)
I hesitated to write a review since I strongly agree with both of the comments that were already there: this book is great. I cannot compare it to another one since, unfortunately, it's the only book on the subject.It's really basic, targetting the non-programmers, but useful for those already used to JavaScript and wants to make the move to Acrobat using what they already know. Beware that this book is written for Acrobat 5.0. So, if you have another version, some things have changed. But I used it with Acrobat Pro 7.0.9 and Acrobat Pro 8.0 and besides the menus that have changed and a couple of parameters that are different, 95% of this book is still applicable to the newer versions. After all, Acrobat forms hasn't changed most in version 6 and above, since Adobe seems to want us to make the move to LiveCycle Designer... By the way, for now I still prefer old Acrobat forms to LiveCycle Designer ones... Since there's no book for LiveCycle Designer, the best seems to be to read this book and, after that, use the free Adobe e-books (JavaScript Reference and Converting Acrobat JavaScript for use in LiveCycle Designer Forms) to know how to convert those scripts for use in LCD. After that, if you want to go further, you can also use the Adobe e-book Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide. So, I gave a 4 stars instead of 5 because the book could have gone further (for example, it shows how to do reports with the Report object, but agrees that it's basic and not too pretty, so it could have shown how to create a new PDF file, add our stuff to it and save it, something shown in Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Guide, but more advanced...) By the way, I can say that this book assumes you already know how to work with Acrobat forms and just wants to add JavaScript functionnality for them. If you don't know how to do Acrobat forms, maybe you can take a look at the book Creating Adobe Acrobat Forms (written for version 5 too; it seems that no one wrote a book about forms after version 5...).
3.0 out of 5 stars
Useful, but heavily oriented to beginning programmers,
By
This review is from: Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript (Paperback)
As the author says, this is currently the only book available that covers Javascript for Acrobat forms, so there's no real alternative. I'm a programmer of some 20 years experience, but quite new to Acrobat forms, so I was hoping for a concise description of the specific details. There is certainly much useful information in the book, and it's more approachable than Adobe's Javascript specifications. I did work through the entire book, but found the sheer amount of extremely basic material to be frustrating and distracting. The assumption seems to be that the reader has zero prior programming experience (although, in that case, the discussion of Javascript's object-oriented design seems remarkably skimpy). Much of the information seems more suited to a general "Programming 101" course. For example, in the second half of Chapter 5, we meet the revelation that it's better to use global variables than fixed constants. Similarly, the topic of functions isn't introduced until Chapter 14. In summary then, I obtained much useful information from the book, but was frustrated by the plodding, linear pace of parts. It would have helped me a lot if the author had used some way of distinguishing the "beginning programmer" material from the Adobe-specific information.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best way to start creating Acrobat eForms!,
By Rufus Deuchler (Firenze, Italy) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Extending Acrobat Forms with JavaScript (Paperback)
I have been reading various guides including the Acrobat JavaScript Object Specifications and I was having the hardest time to perform the most simple tasks (I mean the ones not available in the software) such as "spawning" pages and working with templates, validating or formatting my forms; I was this close to giving up and have a programmer do it for me (I am a graphic designer) and I ordered this book. John Deubert makes it feel so simple! Through step by step exercises I got to feel comfortable with JavaScript, or at least I now understand how the various functions work together. This is a must for who wants to start creating eForms that are catchy and functional. Very easy to read and understand. Thank you for allowing me to "fiddle" with eForms myself.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Computers & Internet > Computer Science
- Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Word Processing
- Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools
- Books > Computers & Internet > Software > Word Processors & Editors
- Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Programming > JavaScript
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
