balachandar,
Just my two cents(OK, FOUR cents) but as a fellow admirer of the Acrobat PDF format I thought I'd reply to your post.
I think the key phrase in your posting is "visually appealing PDF documents." You can't create purely "visual" appeal to any great extent in your PDFs using just Acrobat: you have do the designing, formatting, layout, etc. in some other program that's specifically designed for that kind of thing. Acrobat
isn't a graphic design tool, it's a document publishing tool. As such, if visual appeal is your primary goal, you'll have to create your PDF documents/publications in a desktop publishing application first. Do your design, layout, etc. there first, convert it to PDF format, and then add your interactive elements(forms, buttons, javascript, sounds, movie clips, whatever) in Acrobat.
You can use MSWord to create perfectly presentable PDFs, but that limits you to kind of a Microsofty and amateurish look/feel. I would recommend that you find a good graphic design or DTP application to do your designing in
before you put it into Acrobat.
Obviously, since the Adobe product family of applications(Acrobat, Pagemaker, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) are designed to work together, you'll have the easiest time converting and importing/exporting files between those programs. But there can be a pretty steep learning curve(and price curve!) in using them if you're not very familiar with those applications. These days, there are a number of other(cheaper, sometimes free!) software packages out there that do a great job of creating PDFs. Just do a 'google'(search, that is) for "create PDFs" and you'll find a ton.
My usual workflow is to use Pagemaker for the layout and typesetting of documents, Illustrator and Photoshop for graphic and navigational elements, and then convert the file to PDF format and add bookmarks, form-fields, pop-ups, etc. Sometimes I also convert webpages I've designed to PDF(using Acrobat's web-import function) and then add interactive elements, bookmarks, pop-ups, for a quick presentation. And sometimes I just "print to PDF" using PDF Writer or Distiller(both come with the full version), and, everybody together now:
then add the interactive elements in Acrobat.
As far as design ideas/suggestions go:
Sometimes, just a good splash page works wonders, in some situations, even if the rest of the document is just text with a few graphic elements to spice it up.
Try to limit your content to page-sized 'bites': there's no reason people should have to scroll through a PDF!
Always provide bookmarks, a TOC, and an index to your PDF if it's meant to be read page-to-page, front-to-back.
But also remember that you don't ALWAYS have to re-create the look/feel of a book: you could do a 'slideshow,' an interactive PDF 'maze'(i.e. the reader has to make a decision on each page on what to do or which link to follow), a flashcard 'quizbook' for trivia games or for use as a learning tool, etc., etc.
And, finally, for inspiration, just do a 'google' for "PDF" and see what you find other people doing with Acrobat.
Good luck!
'Well, it's one louder, isn't it?...
What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?...Eleven. Exactly. One louder.'
