For much of its 15-year life, Adobe's Acrobat has worn two hats: one for its role in the print industry and another for business. But this beta represents the program's first steps into a third environment - as a ubiquitous online multimedia format. And we'd bet on it succeeding.
Scheduled for release this summer, Acrobat 9 comes in three versions alongside a free Acrobat Reader application: Standard; Pro and Pro Extended; though only Pro is Mac-compatible.
The biggest news is that this release will provide support for embedding Flash video into documents. While PDFs have long been able to carry Flash content, now at last it can be added on the Mac and played back using the standard Acrobat Reader program without the need for separate Flash player software. This will boost its potential market and is a timely move, coming as it does just as Microsoft's rival technology Silverlight was beginning to garner headlines, if not yet traction.
Sadly, in terms of creating embedded documents Mac users - not for the first time - might still feel a little short-changed, because although Acrobat will happily play back native Flash files, there's no way to convert video from other formats, as you can do with the more expensive, but Windows-only, Acrobat Pro Extended.
By effectively merging Flash with PDF, Acrobat has in one swoop become a viable multimedia authoring tool, a move cemented by its new Portfolio feature, which allows you to build a multimedia document by grouping a variety of material into one compressed PDF file.
Acrobat doesn't seem fazed by the document type either - it happily accepted all the HTML files, spreadsheets and InDesign files we dragged to the portfolio document. Although those with scripting knowledge will be able to build Portfolio layouts from scratch, for most users, the good-looking pre-built yet easily customised templates will be enough.
In our view, the biggest improvement to Acrobat lies in its collaboration features. Collaboration isn't a new concept to Acrobat Pro, but it might as well have been. Adobe has revolutionised a hitherto tortuous sharing process with the launch of a beta online hosting service, acrobat.com. You can, for example, share a document you're working on by emailing it to recipients or uploading it to shared space on acrobat.com. When the person you send it to - the reviewer - follows the email link they are logged into the same file as the initiator.
Adobe has thought this out well. While the initiator needs an Adobe ID to use the service, the recipient can work on the document as a guest. Neither do participants have to have the full version of Acrobat Pro to take part - they can add comments or data through Adobe Reader. This approach makes the review process workable for large organisations. We also like the way you can synchronise the document view so the initiator and reviewer will always be looking at the same page, with the initiator's cursor visible to the reviewer.
It's clear that Adobe has big plans for acrobat.com, which is currently free. With 5GB of space to store your files, its primary role may be file storage and sharing, but it's far more than that. For example, it incorporates Buzzword, Adobe's capable and collaboration-ready online word processor, and can also convert up to five files to PDF. It worked quickly to convert a Office 2008 document to PDF format. Over a standard broadband connection, the service felt smooth and looked stunning.
There are other improvements to the program, including an improved, Flash-compatible web page capture feature, support for 256-bit encryption and a sleeker interface. But print designers haven't been forgotten. Alongside support for ISO document standards PDF/E, PDF/X, and PDF/A, a new tool lets you compare PDFs. Acrobat displays a summary page with hyperlinks that take you to a view highlighting the differences. It's valuable when comparing iterations of a design.
The collaboration improvements alone are worthwhile, but the Flash integration and Portfolio tools make this the most significant upgrade to Acrobat in years. The only pity is that Mac users still aren't quite treated as equals to Windows users.
Verdict
Needs PowerPC G4 or G5 or Intel processor + Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later
Author: Tom Gorham
MacUser Online