Bolstered by its fairly recent acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe has with Acrobat 8 Professional created a serious engineering application that takes full advantage of hundreds of millions of installed Acrobat Readers and Flash Players. The new version enables users to engage others through electronic documents or online. Key features of three main elements include:
- Acrobat 3D v9 (available spring 2007): New Acrobat 3D greatly expands upon v7 3D capabilities, enabling users to open, work with, and export a wide variety of proprietary CAD formats and convert those files into pdfs. Also, Product Manufacturing Information is maintained within pdfs. Using new, free Reader 8 software, users can now also participate in shared reviews as well as fill out, digitally sign, and locally save pdf forms.
- Acrobat Professional: Files from many commonly used packages from Microsoft Office and Visio and Autodesk AutoCAD files can more easily and quickly be converted to pdfs. Users can package related documents from different applications together in a single pdf, making it easier to add, extract, search, and browse only those files that are needed, while keeping digital signatures and security intact.
- Acrobat Connect: Hosted service provides easy initiation, management, and organization of ad hoc collaboration sessions involving screen sharing, whiteboarding, chat, and video and audio conferencing. For a monthly fee, users can set up an online personal meeting room with an easy-to-remember web address and with unlimited use for up to 15 participants. Anyone with a Flash-enabled browser can join the meeting without downloading software. Moreover, Acrobat Connect can be launched directly from a document.
