Part 1 of Customizing PDF Portfolio Layouts: The “Hello World” Example

In Part 1 of Joel Geraci’s 7-part series on “Customizing PDF Portfolio Layouts,” Joel demonstrates how to create a basic Navigator (or custom PDF Portfolio layout) using Flex and outputting it as a .swf file.

Each article in the series will cover a single topic related to learning the Acrobat ActionScript API and eventually developing your own custom navigator. The Acrobat ActionScript SDK and the example Flex projects will be linked to at the end of each article. Additionally, each article will include a brief video introduction so you can get an idea of what the examples will show.

What You'll Need to Get Started

Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro or Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended

If you don't already have a copy of Acrobat, you can buy it here. For Windows users only, you can download a fully functional 30-day trial.

Flex Builder 3

If you don’t have Flex Builder 3, you can purchase or download a 60-day free trial of Flex Builder 3.
Note: If you have updated from version 3.0 of Flex Builder, you will need to download and install the 3.0 SDK. The AcrobatAPI.swc won't work with higher versions of the Flex SDK.

The Acrobat 9.1 ActionScript SDK

You can get The Acrobat 9.1 ActionScript SDK here.

An XML or simple text editor

You won't actually need this until the Part 2 of this series. When he's working on his Navigators, Joel likes to keep everything in Flex, so he uses XMLBuddy but has been known to use Dreamweaver for XML editing, too.

Zip archiving tool

Again, Joel likes to keep everything in Flex, so he uses Flex Ant Tasks to zip his files up into a Navigator. Instructions on how to set this up are in Part 2.