Adobe's Acrobat 9 Now Performing Online Flash Integration and On-Demand Highlight Acrobat 9 Release Andy Patrizio
The 2005 merger between Adobe and Macromedia continues to yield more combined products, with the latest being Macromedia's Flash technology integrated into the latest release of Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) reader.
Flash integration in Adobe Acrobat 9 is one of many new features in the update to the file reader, which allows publishers to preserve documents in a much richer format than plain text or as a Microsoft Word document.
The PDF file format (define) began life as a way to capture static images of fancy documents that could be viewed on a computer the same as the printed version. Adobe has since added 3-D graphics and input capability, and now it has Flash animation and programmability for things like welcome screens — just another step in its evolution
"That opens up a whole new world for the possibilities of not only the definition of PDF, but what an electronic document can be," Marion Melani, group product marketing manager for Acrobat told InternetNews.com. "So the ability to integrate video and Flash into a PDF document is very important."
Acrobat 9 also offers the ability to combine a variety of media types into a single document called PDF Portfolios. These media types include documents, video, audio, and 3D objects, all combined into one, compressed PDF file. There are a number of layout templates to choose from, or users may create their own, to create things like brochures and documentation.
Acrobat 9 contains real-time collaboration technology, another Macromedia legacy technology known as Breeze. Through the online network at Acrobat.com, two or more people can collaborate in creating a document online.
Acrobat.com is a suite of hosted services current in public beta and for free signup for now. It has a storage space of 5GB, an online PDF converter and a word processor for creating documents online. That browser is based on Buzzword, a Web-based word processor Adobe acquired last year.
While the word processing element can be seen as competition to online word processors from Microsoft, Google and others, Adobe sees it more as a cooperation technology because it will support their document formats as well.
Everything Going On-Demand
Like the online version of Photoshop launched last year, Acrobat.com also represents Adobe's increasing efforts at on-demand software. "Everything we're doing is on-demand," said Mark Grilli, group product marketing manager for Acrobat.com. "One of the big value propositions is you can access your stuff from anywhere from a browser. This lets you create a central access repository where you can get files as you need them."
Melissa Webster, program vice president for content and digital media technologies at IDC, complimented Adobe in making PDF richer over the years. "PDF is becoming an interesting rich container for high gloss, interactive experiences," she said. "PDF documents can really interact with the user and seem like apps. Flash is part of that but so is this new Portfolio feature."
She said Acrobat.com is the next step in Adobe's evolution and experimentation with services. "It's starting to look like a suite of online tools for knowledge workers. Online products aren't taking a bite out of the enterprise application market, but they are a nice work extension. Adobe has certainly managed to go from desktop products to online editions."
The Acrobat line of creation tools will be available in July. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is expected to be available for $699, Acrobat 9 Pro is expected to be available for $449, Acrobat 9 Standard will go for $299. All three will have discounts for registered users seeking to upgrade. The Acrobat Reader will be out in July as well.
