Acrobat, won't you please, please help me?

Michael Geary — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 21:31:38 +0000

Adobe Acrobat has a feature where you can put a PDF file on your website and invite other Acrobat users to mark it up with comments directly on the Web. I was working my way through setting this up, when Acrobat asked me:

Uh, sure, no problem, click OK and the message box is closed. Let’s go find that Reviewing dialog and open its Online Commenting Settings. Hmm… Now which menu is that on? I don’t see it anywhere.

Oh, that’s right, they meant the Preferences dialog. Reviewing panel. Got it.

I don’t see a Reviewing panel? Oh! It was the Online Repository panel of the Preferences dialog, that was it! Hmm… Not there either. Where is this panel I’m supposed to fix?

Um, what was I trying to do in the first place? I forgot!

Confession time: I work at Adobe, on the Acrobat team, so this dialog is as much my fault as anyone’s. No, I didn’t write this particular piece of code, but I didn’t fix it either.

And it may not that easy to fix. If you develop software, especially if you work on large programs that have been around a while, you know how it is.

Does your software do this? I bet we’re not the only ones.

Computers are really, really good at following directions. I’m not. If a program can give me a four-step procedure to follow, why can’t it just do it itself?

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Acrobat, won't you please, please help me?