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Adobe Intros Acrobat 9, Launches Acrobat.com Beta
6/2/2008
Adobe Monday announced details of its forthcoming major revision to the entire Acrobat family: Acrobat 9. The company also debuted a new Acrobat.com collaboration beta site and announced an updated Creative Suite (version 3.3), which will incorporate the upcoming Acrobat 9 Pro software.
Acrobat 9 and Creative Suite 3.3
The new versions of Acrobat 9--Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, Acrobat 9 Pro, and Acrobat 9 Standard--incorporate a number of functional and workflow improvements that are designed to expand the range of collaboration tools available to users and broaden support for multimedia.
We spoke with an Adobe education representative, Bob Regan, director of Worldwide K-12, who told us that the new features are particularly geared toward expanding the software's functionality for students in the areas of collaboration and the creation of electronic portfolios.
The process of creating portfolios in Acrobat has been simplified in the new version and includes:
- Support for Flash video;
- The ability to embed PowerPoint presentations (without converting them);
- Pre-designed templates for portfolios;
- The ability to add descriptions in Edit view; and
- Support for a variety of media in one PDF portfolio, ranging from still images and video to 3D objects and spreadsheets.
Other new features include:
- A new form wizard;
- Form submissions through e-mail, with a tool that also allows for the tallying of responses to forms;
- Built-in 3D object support (Extended only);
- Adobe Presenter included with Extended;
- Enhanced fidelity when embedding Web pages;
- New 256-bit document encryption;
- Redaction tools for permanently removing sensitive information for documents;
- Automated tools for previewing, preflighting, and otherwise preparing PDF files for print;
- The ability to verify PDF standards via a new PDF Standards pane;
- The ability to create and validate accessible documents; and
- Various performance improvements.
Significantly, the new version also eliminates the fee for enabling form saving in Acrobat Reader. This will allow users to fill out electronic, PDF-based forms and save those forms with the fields filled out. The form creator no longer has to pay to enable this feature.
Acrobat 9 also enables certain collaborative features available through the new Acrobat.com beta Web site. (See below for more information.)
Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, Acrobat 9 Pro, and Acrobat 9 Standard are expected to ship in July for Windows in English, French, German, and Japanese. The Mac OS X lineup, also slated for July, will not include Pro Extended, but will include Pro and Standard editions. Acrobat 9 Pro Extended will sell for $699; Acrobat 9 Pro will sell for $449; and Acrobat 9 Standard will sell for $299.
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