It's made for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, the book isn't available as an updated version for the newest Adobe Professional. The examples are quite simple.

It's made for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, the book isn't available as an updated version for the newest Adobe Professional. The examples are quite simple.

I had no prior working knowledge of javascript and I wanted to make my Acrobat forms more functional. This book served the purpose.
The book is a little dated, but still very relevant. Things have changed with the release of Acrobat 8, but the information in the book is still valuable. The book gives step-by-steps on how to do things in previous versions, but if you are willing to look around, you can find the screens referred to in Acrobat 8. With that in mind, I had to give the book a five star rating, since I can't fault the author on anything in the book.
I am looking forward to books this good written for Acrobat 8.

I was looking for some more advanced features than were offered, but it looks like it will be helpful to me moving forward. I build alot of forms in Adobe Acrobat. If you have never done javascript in Acrobat, or have intermediate knowledge, it may be a helpfull book for you.

I love this book! I am a professional graphic designer that does not know how to write any JavaScript. I just wanted to be able to create more dynamic pdf files. The author did a great job explaining the JavaScript used in this book in a way that non programmers can grasp!

Mr. Deubert was also very gracious in helping me customize one of the scripts in his book to work for a specific project I had. He stands behind his product!

I recommend this to anyone that is a non programmer looking to learn how to use JavaScript with Acrobat.

I have been making forms in Acrobat since version 3.0, and have a background in Dbase III, Foxpro, Visual Basic .NET, and SQL 2000. However, I never learned Javascript formally or in-depth.

This book was an excellent springboard to a good working knowledge of JavaScript, especially relating to Acrobat. The chapters are broken down by functionality and increase in complexity, and each has at least one project that the author will guide you step-by-step (you can download the PDF's from the author's website). The book was edited very well, I found only one mistake (a typo) after reading the book almost page for page. What makes this an outstanding book is the clarity of the examples and explanations the author has so obviously spent much time on to help us "poor newbies".

My focus was how to get started interacting with databases (SQL or Access), and while the first Chapter (16) was review for people familiar with databases, Chapter 17 really got me started. The project in the book gives the basics -- to go beyond, you need the following resources: the Acrobat JavaScript Scripting Reference and the Scripting Guide (...).

Developers know that the devil is in the detail, so once I got past the database interface hurdle, the other chapters were just as useful to put the necessary finishing touches on my project.

Here's the bottom line: If you are already advanced in your knowledge of JavaScript, this isn't your book! You know enough to pick up the Acrobat JavaScript Reference and figure it out. If you're just starting out or need to know, in detail, what capabilities Acrobat and JavaScript can give you for an IT solution, this book is an excellent resource.

One last thing that makes the author of the book outstanding: He has a free newsletter for those looking for better ways of utilizing Acrobat (...)

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.

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.