Sorry, Windows, but where’s the PDF reader?

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Sometimes life throws up its little ironies, and while they don’t necessarily make you laugh out loud they do cause the corner of your mouth to curl slightly into a grin and an eyebrow to rise just a bit. Today was one such occasion.

As a Mac user I’m told that one of the disadvantages I suffer is that I don’t have access to industry standard software or the sheer range of applications PC users enjoy. The fact that I’ve never, not once, been unable to find software to help me achieve whatever I’ve needed to is immaterial.

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The future for Acrobat.com – and for the office?

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Those with a long memory may well remember Adobe’s first attempt to conquer the business market with the launch of Acrobat Exchange and its promise of the “paperless office” built around the round-robin swapping of PDFs. The arrival of the internet largely put paid to that original all-encompassing vision but now, sixteen years later, Adobe is back for a second bite at the cherry with the announcement of the official out-of-beta launch of Acrobat.com.

So is Adobe likely to be any more successful this time around? The recent press briefing, given by product manager Eric Larsen and hosted within Acrobat.com itself, was certainly interesting…

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Acrobat, Flash and iPaper

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

In my last digital design column in the latest issue of the magazine I take a look at the long history of “iPaper”. It’s essentially the story of the holy grail for designers: a format that manages to combine the design strengths and reading experience of paper with the unbeatable advantages offered by the internet – universal, instant and effectively free publishing and delivery.

Back in my first column, 150 issues previously, I had thought it was obvious what format would come to fill this role: the web-optimised PDF. And, as the most common document format on the web after HTML and with semi-integrated playback in most browsers, to an extent it does. Generally though, despite all its other strengths, PDF has failed miserably in its web ambitions. 

So is there an alternative?

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Acrobat.com: From PDF to Flash

Friday, July 4th, 2008

As I said in my recent review, the launch of Acrobat 9 is the most important release in years. Naturally most of the attention has been on the incorporation of the Flash player into the Adobe Reader with all that this means in terms of media handling and interactivity.

However it’s possible that the associated launch of Acrobat.com will eventually prove even more significant.

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Adobe CS4 – First Thoughts

Friday, June 20th, 2008

Now that the dust has cleared on the launch of Acrobat 9 thoughts naturally turn to Adobe’s next major release Creative Suite 4. So what might we expect to see?

Well the launch of Acrobat 9 might well give us a very strong clue. The Acrobat applications are focussed on the business/office productivity market, but the introduction of new PDF capabilities gives the CS teams something to work with. And with Acrobat 9 that’s an understatement…

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Acrobat 9 goes Flash

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

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?

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