News 

Reader 9 provides compatibility with the recently released upgrade to Adobe's Acrobat software for PDF authoring and editing, an upgrade that primarily focussed on adding Flash support. Reader 9 is required to view PDFs with embedded Flash content.

Reader 9 also

ADVERTISEMENT

provides support for PDF Portfolios - single PDF files that combine multiple media and file types - and gives access to Acrobat.com, Adobe's suite of online services for creating, sharing and collaborating on PDFs.

Adobe Reader 9 is a free download from adobe.com/reader and requires Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard.

PDF officially became ISO 320000 this week, following December's vote to accept it as a international document format standard. Adobe has now handed control of the format to the ISO, though it will continue to particicpate in the format's development. Now that the technical details are available to all, it will make it easier for other developers to integrate PDF support in their own applications. Quark and Apple could be early beneficiaries.