Yesterday Adobe officially announced the launch of its latest Acrobat 9 so what are my first impressions?

I was invited down to London a month or so ago to the press briefing and it was clear that Adobe considers this a major release. And after the pitiful version 8 it really can’t help but shine.

The feature that Adobe was stressing is the new ability to handle Flash – but just how significant is this development? And come to that – just how new is it? And how welcome?

After all Acrobat already supports Flash and has done so since version 6. If you don’t believe me, select the Movie tool (hidden away in version 8 under Tools > Advanced Editing), drag on your page and then see which files formats are supported. There, lurking among the AVIs, MOVs and WMVs, is SWF.

The first big difference is that with version 9, the Flash player is actually built in to Adobe Reader. Previously you had to rely on the end user having independently installed the Flash player to ensure reliable playback – now it’s an absolute given. It’s part of the platform.

The second major difference is that Acrobat 9 now supports Flash video (FLV) not just SWF. And with the new Acrobat Pro Extended it can automatically convert all those AVI, MOV and WMV files to FLV for efficient web-delivery and playback. Effectively this means that PDF has now moved on from its static ePaper roots to become a universal dynamic multimedia format.

So how welcome is this? Already there are those Flash-phobics that are bemoaning the despoiling of their apparently safely static format (though see above).

I have to say that I don’t agree. Yes there undoubtedly will be some horrid design excesses and download times, but you have to blame the designer for that not the platform. And when it is used sensibly and subtly, Flash’s multimedia handling can take efficient design work onto an entirely new level.

More to the point even in everyday use, audio and video is just becoming a natural part of computing life. In particular, with the spread of webcams and movie-enabled digital cameras and camera phones, video is now becoming ubiquitous and, as a universal file exchange format, PDF needs to reflect that.

Imagine you’re buying a property and download the PDF schedule. Now thanks to Acrobat 9 alongside the text, photos and drawings you’ll be able to see a video walkthrough. Surely that has to be a good thing?