If you haven’t heard about them yet, the expected upgrade includes:

-Forms creation in the Standard version that can be electronically completed

-Added Acrobat 3D technology in the Professional version

-Forms routing capabilities for data collection through a hosted service provided by Adobe

-A lone Professional version for Mac

-Continued support for real-time document review and markup in shared spaces

-New GUI update

Were any of these on your Acrobat 9 wish list of must-have features?

It looks as if Acrobat 9 is slated to be the PDF product release of summer 2008, fully loaded with PDF capabilities. With separate standalone product functionalities rolled into one, you should expect to get more for your money with this release.

Thus, being able to do something like animate static content is definitely a plus. Able2Extract has the ability to do this with its support for PDF to GIF conversion.

Alongside the usual image conversion options, Able2Extract has a Multipage image option available for image conversions. This can be used to animate static images by animating them in a way similar to how a flipbook animates hand drawn pictures.

To animate your static PDF images, follow these steps:

1) Open your PDF or XPS document that contains a multipage image in Able2Extract v.5.0.

2) Select the page, pages or a page range of your multipage image.

3) Click on the image conversion icon in the toolbar.

4 ) In the image conversion dialogue box, select GIF. The GIF conversion options should then be highlighted and accessible.

5) Put a check mark in the Multipage image option.

6)The next GIF option you need to set is the GIF Animation Speed. Select how fast or slow you want your animation to occur in terms of seconds per page.

7) There is a Black and White colour conversion option available as well if you want to colour convert your image.

8 ) Choose your image scaling and DPI resolution preferences.

9) Select the Destination directory where you want to save your file.

10) Then click OK to convert.

The GIF images you create with this method can be opened and viewed in Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7.0.

If you need more information on what the GIF file format is and what else it can do, you can visit our resource pages for more details. We’ve got articles specifically on image formats and PDF conversion.

While now is the time to start worrying about your number crunching skills and your organizational skills, one thing you don’t have to worry about with Adobe around is your record keeping skills—with the help of the PDF file format.

Whether you do your taxes by hand or have someone do them for you, at one point or another, your tax forms will be touched by Adobe technology somewhere along the way. How?

There’s an interesting tax filing web tour over on the Adobe site that shows a behind the scenes look at how LiveCycle ES and other Adobe technology can play a role in your tax filing and tax form reviews.

Through a fictional scenario, it shows you:

-How Flex is used to build applications for constructing self serve tax filing and tax review
workflows

-What happens when you enter data into interactive forms or online questionnaires

-Multiple ways of processing submitted forms

-When Acrobat and Reader are used for working on your tax forms

-What security features keep your tax information secure

The format has indeed gained such a reputation for being manipulated too easily and frequently in the past that the latter probably came more naturally to you than the others. But this fact hasn’t turned the PDF into a has-been format yet.

Check out The PDF Paradox: How Does A Risky Format Draw Us Into Its Ecosystem?--an article that tries to answer just that by putting the PDF into perspective.

With short glances and spotlights on PDF innovations, uses and technologies, the article goes beyond "Adobe”, “Reader” and “Acrobat” to look at the bigger picture—the PDF ecosystem, where the format takes centre stage.