Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended review

Further advances

That's by no means all when it comes to new forms and collaboration features. For producing advanced XML-based forms, there's the new standalone LiveCycle Designer ES (not for the faint-hearted). For occasional use the reworked Start Form wizard is likely to do all that you need - automatically spotting potential form fields in any PDF, including those created from scanned hard copy and now letting you check that they are setup correctly. When you've collected your responses in the Tracker you can now search, sort and filter data much as you would in a spreadsheet before exporting for advanced analysis.

In terms of document collaboration and review, the new Document Compare command should prove very useful. This automatically highlights differences between two versions of a PowerPoint presentation, for example, right down to recoloured images.

Acrobat 9 even enables real time review. Use the Send and Collaborate Live command and you can email others a PDF or Acrobat.com link that, when opened, opens up a new Collaborate Live task pane. Using this, you can synchronise your current page views and exchange chat messages. Using the Share My Screen command you can move beyond page sharing to share and discuss any currently open application with up to three users in a new browser window, though this capability isn't actually tied to Acrobat - you can simply sign up at Acrobat.com.

Apart from the FLV video conversion all the features described above are available not just in Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, but in Acrobat 9 Pro. So what else does Extended offer to justify its hefty price tag?

Well, first it takes in features formerly covered in the separately released Acrobat 3D (now discontinued), which means that you can insert a whole range of 3D models in formats such as 3DS, OBJ and DAE. These can then be rotated in 3D space, relit and re-rendered and all from within the free Reader application. There are also new features on this front, including a dedicated 3D Reviewer and the ability to export models to 2D vector formats.

Acrobat 9 Pro Extended also adds support for an entirely new media type: maps. Once you've set up or "georegistered" a map involves (with boundary co-ordinates and the map scale), users of Reader can interact with it by viewing the latitude and longitude coordinates, measuring distance, area and perimeter and exporting locations and measurements.

Adobe Presenter

The real stand out, and major selling point, for Acrobat 9 Pro Extended, however, is the inclusion of Adobe Presenter 7, which costs £309 exc VAT on its own. This is an add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint that dramatically increases its power. To begin with it adds advanced media handling which lets you insert flash SWF animations, record, synch and edit an audio commentary for your slides, and insert, capture and edit video. You can also create interactive quizzes based on a range of question types: multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank and so on.

The real strength of Presenter has always come from the fact that you can then export your media-enhanced, interactive PowerPoint presentation to Flash SWF ready for high-impact, web-efficient playback in any browser. Now, there's another near-universal publishing option available: PDF. And with the Flash player now integrated into Adobe Reader, the resulting PDF is just as rich and engaging as SWF.

Conclusion

Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is certainly not cheap and if you aren't going to use its advanced capabilities - and it's difficult to imagine how you could use all of them - you could save a great deal of money by looking at the alternatives.