blog index - News

The Acrobat 9 PDF Portfolios Contest Has Begun!

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:41:04 -0400

Are you the PDF Master you claim to be? Put yourself to the test and take the challenge. AcrrobatUsers.com is holding a contest to see who can make the most creative and original PDF Portfolio with Acrobat 9.

PDF Portfolios, formerly known as PDF Packages, is a feature that combines different documents into a single bundle you can then attach to your PDF. You can combine Word documents, spreadsheets, and emails while still retaining the file settings of each individual file. And now the people over at Adobe want to what you can do with this feature.

The submitted entries will be judged on the overall quality, effectiveness, and appearance. Your entry can include “images, graphics, Flash files, video, various document types and JavaScripting”—basically anything that can be made into a visually compelling PDF portfolio. So be as thematic and creative as you can be.

The prizes will be worth the effort. First prize is a copy of Acrobat 9 Pro Extended for Windows or, for Mac, Acrobat 9 Pro. Second prize is a Special Edition 8 GB iPod Nano. And third prize is an AcrobatUsers.com T-shirt. Your PDF Portfolio will also be up for display in the upcoming PDF Portfolio Gallery on the site.

To submit an entry, you’ll need to upload your PDF Portfolio along with an entry form online. AcrobatUsers.com has a ton of resources to help get you started. The deadline to enter is October 7, 2008. For more details you can check out the official announcement here.

Good Luck!

Adobe PDF Now An Official ISO Standard

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Tue, 8 Jul 2008 09:57:35 -0400

Get ready to celebrate because the PDF industry has reached a major milestone.

If you haven’t heard the news yet, on July 2^nd, 2008, after more than 10 years on the market as a de facto standard, the Portable Document Format (PDF) was approved for ISO certification as an international standard.

PDF standardization, as everyone knows, has been long overdue. In 15 years, 9 generations of technology have come and gone (we’re at Acrobat 9 now!). The fact that the PDF has made it through the long years and has improved steadily from version to version is a testament to its capabilities and uses as a format.

Glancing Back To A Present Moment

Of course, as a standard as it will mean the significant changes PDF critics and experts have been talking about for over a year now. I remember in a February 2007 posting, I threw up a few questions that were aimed at the moment when PDF 1.7 got its certification:

“Yet, aside from the competition with the ISO approval for OOXML, Adobe is also seeing competition with itself. When the PDF 1.7 spec gets its ISO certification, changes will have to be made in software already being used for PDF files. How will pre-ISO PDF files be handled as opposed to post-ISO PDF files? This also means changes for third party vendors-- their products, their market and their projects. There’ll be a ripple to accommodate the adjustments, but just how big?”

I guess we can start fully answering those questions now . . . .

Are you looking forward to working with PDF files? Hope so. Because there’s no time like the present to be a PDF user.

Cheers!

Acrobat 9 Released, Adobe App Vulnerability Detected

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:15:08 -0400

Major news in the PDF world this week is a mixed bag of releases and vulnerabilities.

First off, the Acrobat 9 family has now been officially released. The upgrade version everyone’s been waiting for is available for purchase and includes a number of buzz worthy goodies such as Flash integration and document synchronization. Acrobat 9 also has the ability to compare different versions of a single PDF and an enhanced webpage to PDF conversion feature.

If you want to check out the features in depth, free trials for all three versions are available on the Adobe site.

The other announcement this week—a new Adobe Reader and Acrobat vulnerability has been discovered. The security bulletin on the Adobe site claims that the vulnerabilities found in the current Reader and Acrobat versions 8.0 through 8.1.2 have the ability to crash the applications, which could allow malicious users to take over your system.

This probably has you worried if your PDF apps are prone to stalling and then crashing moments later. Fortunately, patches are available for the affected software versions. For more information on this security threat visit the Adobe Security Bulletin.

Investintech @ Microsoft Tech ED 2008 (Developer)

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:36:36 -0400

The Investintech PDF Developer Tools team is going to be exhibiting live on location at the Microsoft Tech Ed 2008 Developer Conference in Orlando from June 2-6.

Will you be there? If so, come find us on the exhibition floor in Booth D1132 .

Regardless of whether you can be there or not, we have some great things in store for you here at Investintech.com and on our blog for the week of the conference, including:

Our Pure Gold Giveaway – Enter for your chance to Win a 1-Ounce Gold Bar (more on that below).
Daily blog wrap-ups from Tech-Ed, including Bill Gates’ keynote session.
Instant updates from the conference floor and conference sessions via Twitter.

Investintech Pure Gold Giveaway

Check in over the next few days here at our blog, as we will have more details on how you can enter for your chance to win a 99% pure 1-ounce Gold Bar, valued at the daily current market price (roughly US$900 as of this writing).

Microsoft Adds Native PDF Creation To Office 2007

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:16:44 -0400

Microsoft made an announcement this week that the Office 2007 Service Pack 2, scheduled for early 2009, will finally provide users with native support for ODF and PDF.

Its own XPS OOXML format (aka “PDF Killer”), which caused so much controversy with ISO committees and users, has anticlimactically been put on the back burner. Native support for XPS will be included within the next version of the Office suite.

As to the PDF, it seems that since Adobe’s PDF is now standardized, Microsoft can include the native support for the format it had initially mapped out for the Office 2007 suite. But while you’ll be able to create PDFs natively, chances are you still won’t have full access to the heavy duty features which stand alone products like Acrobat and Sonic PDF Creator can offer. So, don’t recycle bin those applications just yet.

By going one step further than the export feature for these major formats, Microsoft is finally opening itself up to adopting and adapting to non-Microsoft ways. With integration for different vendor formats, could Microsoft finally be co-operating?

. . . Or, equipped with a wide user-base, a solid application suite and support for open source and final document formats, could they be pulling out all the stops to overtake its biggest competitors?

Adobe Acrobat 9 Is On The Way

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:38:03 -0400

The PDF world this week is buzzing with the release of early details on the next version of Acrobat that were reported on eWeek.com.

With the recent onslaught of Adobe TV, Photoshop Express, the AMP media player and Adobe’s push for an open format for Digital Cinema files, Adobe has been busy. But they still haven’t lost sight of its hallmark product, Adobe Acrobat.

Moreover, they haven’t lost site of the product as a single out-of-the-box solution for your desktop. And the Adobe PDF makers are making the next upgrade just that. From the sparse details, Acrobat 9 is merging separate already existing PDF functionalities into Acrobat.

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.

What’s On The Adobe Agenda?

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:30:15 -0500

Will Adobe bite into Apple next?

In news headlines last week Microsoft announced they were licensing Adobe’s Flash Lite and Reader LE technology for their Windows Mobile platform.

With both Flash Lite and Reader LE running on Windows Mobile, users can run Flash content and view PDF files respectively, both of which are common staples of mobile browsing.

On a larger scale, the deal also means that Adobe will have its technology installed on billions of mobile devices and Microsoft will be offering better user experiences for its mobile users.

However, underneath the headlines, news sources are saying that the Adobe-Microsoft deal is a response to the iPhone market and Steve Jobs’ rejection of Adobe’s Flash Lite technology, claiming that it performed too slowly on the iPhone.

Despite the rejection, Adobe is still interested in developing a Flash player for iPhone. However, the company will need more of Apple’s co-operation or risk developing with the iPhone SDK on their own and clashing with Apple.

Already having developed a PDF advertising hybrid with Yahoo! Ads, Adobe has made moves in the past for popular user bases, technology and business models, ones which companies like its new friend, Microsoft, wants in on with a $44.6 billion dollar bid for Yahoo!

How badly does Adobe want a piece of the iPhone user base?

If Adobe is willing to tweak an entire format as part of gaining the advertising market base and pair up with an old rival for a stronger presence on mobile devices, it’ll be interesting to see what Adobe’s next strategy is to get its software on another popular user front.

A Short News Flash For PDF/A Users

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:57:14 -0500

It’s easy to forget the subset standards of the PDF, especially with the recent ISO certification of the PDF 1.7 specification.

You don’t usually hear about these subset standards unless you actually use them. Likewise, you probably don’t see many resources on the subset standards unless you actually look for them. Fortunately, there’s the PDF/A Competence Center (how could I have missed this site?).

In case you’ve never come across the site, the PDF/A Competence Center is an association of tech companies and PDF experts primarily focused upon promoting the exchange and use of PDF-based archives.

If you’re looking for PDF/A basics, FAQs, press releases and technical documentation, the www.pdfa.org website has informative articles and resources for both PDF/A creation and usage. The site is continually updated with specialized forum discussions and news.

In fact, they’ve been advertising the first ever 2-day international PDF/A conference from April 10^th-11^thin Amsterdam. Much like the Adobe PDF and Acrobat Conference, it’ll cover different types of tracks on popular PDF/A topics.

Day One will hold separate knowledge tracks for beginner, intermediate and advanced user levels covering topics such as digital signatures, application scenarios, document scanning, fonts, text and Unicode, PDF/A-2 and the legal implications of using PDF/A.

The industry tracks on Day Two will take a look at the role of PDF/A and best practices to follow in the libraries and public sectors; engineering and manufacturing; and business to customer industries.

You can register online for the event. Or you can get a copy of the flyer here—which you can fill out and submit online.

Is Adobe Weakening Your Sense Of PDF Security?

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:04:36 -0500

In PDF news, Adobe has updated both their Reader and Acrobat applications to version 8.1.2.

According to the Adobe site, this update patch “includes several important security fixes, among them a few of critical severity that could be remotely exploitable”. What’s behind the “critical severity” hasn’t yet been publicly announced or confirmed by Adobe.

However, the story around this update isn’t the bug itself. The main concern is the lack of information about the critical threat.

This brings us back to the zero-day PDF bug alert back in October when in absence of a software patch, the only prevention advice given to users was to stop downloading online PDFs altogether. Not a great time for users whose work depends upon opening PDF files.

Although there are patches to fix this one, the concern is still the same. It just goes to show that when it comes to PDF security (or any software security for that matter), being informed is the best safeguard users want to have.

So in the absence of the official word from Adobe, what details are there?

One vulnerability researcher, Kostya Kortchinsky, went in search for the details himself and narrowed down the “mystery” security flaw. His reverse engineering on the updated patch revealed that it was designed for fixing a stack overflow bug. Moreover, a proof-of-concept exploit was successfully tested in unpatched Readers that crashed in IE browsers.

As to the origins of the exploit, Symantec Corp. speculates that it might have originated from malicious ads on hacked websites that lure visitors to open rigged PDF files via JavaScript without knowing it.

On Adobe’s silence, an article on Computerworld proposed that it was due to software being used within the Reader which Adobe is licensing. If true, it would mean that Adobe’s discretion also involves protecting other third –party vendors and their products, not just the Acrobat and Reader applications.

Yet, however plausible all these might be, none are being confirmed by Adobe.

The real details will have to wait until then--along with many anxious PDF users. In the meantime, the best advice for now (as always) is to update your software.

PDF, A De-Facto Standard No More

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:29:08 -0500

While you're all excited about the upcoming holidays and can't think of anything else but that gift list to get through, you can add one more thing to get excited about.

The de facto standard of information interchange, aka the PDF, just got one step closer to being adopted as a standardized format. Last week, the PDF 1.7 specification gained the approval votes it needed from ISO committee voting members as it reached the Enquiry “Close of voting” stage in the standardization process.

Before this certification happens though, the comments included with the votes need to be addressed before the format gets its official ISO standard tag—ISO 32000 (lovely name, no?). Even with those last few hurdles, the PDF’s standardization process is looking good.

Jim King, PDF architect and Senior Principle Scientist at Adobe Systems Inc. will serve as technical editor for the international working group meeting in January where the submitted 205 comments will be resolved.

On his blog he states, "If the group can address all the comments to the satisfaction of all countries, especially the ones voting negatively, it is possible to finish at that meeting and publish the revised document".

So Is It Still An Adobe-Microsoft Showdown?

In the face of impending success, you can't help but wonder about OOXML and where its standardization is headed.

OOXML was also submitted and fast tracked for an official ISO standard, but rejected in September. Alongside that rejection was the controversy over Microsoft's active influence over committee members and their votes. The OOXML proposal then went back to the drawing board for revisions to take the negative votes and comments into account.

Now, three months later, as its Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) draws near in February, OOXML's standardization is still up in the air as its interoperability, the OOXML hot topic of the day, will be a major factor in the decision to approve it as such.

Making it even harder is that OOXML is constantly held up against ODF, the poster child of open source solutions. It'll be interesting to see how "open" and how much "interoperability" a Microsoft format can possess in general.

While that issue unfolds, the PDF will more than likely get the ISO standardization without much drama. Has Adobe won this round already without even trying?

These are exciting times for the PDF format indeed.

Adobe Enables Yahoo! Ads In PDF Files

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:24:53 -0500

Adobe’s PDF innovation has been nothing but giant frog leaps: online collaboration, interactive PDFs, rich multimedia, and complex 3D PDFs. And just when you think the PDF can’t get any better or leap any further, Adobe pushes the envelope once again.

Just yesterday, Adobe brought the PDF to yet another level with the announcement of their latest ad-enabling beta web service. Here’s a short summary:

Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo is a limited online service that lets publishers generate ad revenue from within the PDF files they distribute using a pay-per-click model where the PDF publisher gets paid for every ad click-through done by the user.

As the title suggests, the service is powered by Yahoo’s inventory of online ads and network of ad partners. Participating publishers simply upload and register their PDF files to the service site .

Adobe then analyzes and reviews the file according to key words and context so that the files are enabled with dynamic and automated ads that are relevant to the PDF’s content. The PDF is then sent back to the publisher to distribute.

Where a minimum amount of disruption is the aim of the game, as is the case with reading PDFs, the ads will appear in a neat little side bar within in the PDF file itself. When you click on an ad a different browser window will open to display the web page, keeping your reading space clutter-free.

The service is free and currently limited to U.S. publishers and English content. Registration is required.

It’s become obvious that the PDF is not just a format that preserves and presents information anymore. Among other things, it’s now a useful marketing tool as well.

What else will it be able to do in the future? Will there be nothing the PDF can’t do? The best way to find out: stay tuned.

In the meantime, keep an eye out for those ad-enabled PDFs.

How Will I Remember Bruce Chizen?

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:31:08 -0500

Since starting my blogging part in the PDF world, I’ve gotten used to a few things--the look of web pages I visit, the writers and editors I read, the multiple passwords I use, and the same names I always see. They’re cornerstones in my “PDF life”, so to say.

As computer users, we’re conditioned to the time frame of the Internet, where being outdated means being 3 years old. Thus, when faces and names are around for longer than that, you’re confronted with a stark contrast that hits you in an odd way.

Not sure what I’m talking about? Take for instance movie sequels, prequels, series and the originals in between. Perfect examples—Star Wars and James Bond. Who was the first Bond actor you ever watched? Which was your favourite Star Wars cast? There some things that are just set and etched in your mind whether you like it or not.

And so, there came to be one name that got “etched” into mine, and one epithet that I got used to writing: “Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen “.
Last week it was suddenly announced that he made a personal decision to leave Adobe Systems Inc.

Adobe Press Release reports that he’ll stay on as CEO until the beginning of December when Shantanu Narayen, President and COO, will then take over Chizen’s position. Narayen, who was one of the key figures in for the Macromedia acquisition in 2005, joined Adobe Systems Inc. in January 1998 as vice president and general manager of Adobe’s engineering technology group.

After this transition, Chizen will take up a strategic advisory position for the remainder of his term until the fiscal 2008 year ends, which puts another marker in Adobe’s history-- and my PDF one as well.

Everyone is summarizing on his career, his countless contributions and his major accomplishments as a way of honouring and remembering him. How will I remember Bruce Chizen? Hmmm. . . .

As the subject of my blog postings and musings.

As the smiling face beside the executive profile I’ve read about a dozen times.

As the slightly accented voice in countless interviews I’ve listened to during my research.

And. . . as the first CEO of Adobe in my “PDF life”.

What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt You. . .Or Can It?

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:40:32 -0400

If you’ve heard about the recent PDF vulnerability in the news, you probably haven’t heard much.

This is because the details are scarce. The main headline is that there exists a PDF vulnerability that can be exploited on Windows XP systems that have IE7 installed. There was only one other vague detail-- a YouTube video posted on Petko Petkov’s blog—the U.K.-based security researcher that first discovered the vulnerability. The video demonstrates what the PDF vulnerability is capable of. In the video, the opened PDF automatically launches applications on your computer without any other input than clicking on the file.

If you were worried or frustrated at this news, there was good reason to be. The blog posting itself sounded ominous. It didn’t help matters that the only advice offered in protection against this obscure vulnerability was to avoid opening any PDF files at all, a thing hard to imagine when you and millions of other users download and open PDFs on a daily basis. No immediate fix was even released, let alone acknowledgement or confirmation from the major companies involved. Until now.

Adobe finally confirmed and verified the security vulnerability last Friday, two weeks after the news was released. They’ve posted an advisory alert on the issue which can be found on their website. But there’s good news and a bit of bad news.

The good news: A workaround was provided by Adobe as a temporary means of protecting against it. The work around means modifying the registry of your computer.

The bad news: Details still aren’t available. Petkov stated that he wouldn’t reveal the proof of concepts of the vulnerability until an update was released. In addition, those who aren’t able to implement the workaround on their systems will have to wait for that update fix as well, which is slated for the end of October.

So until then, you’ll have to keep an eye out for everything and anything when it comes to the PDF because what you don’t know can hurt you.

OOXML , Office 2007, And The PDF

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:16:01 -0400

While we were on Apple iPhones and phone bills last week, the news headlines had also been relentlessly covering the many controversies generated during ISO's review of Microsoft’s OOXML, right up until the final voting date on Sept. 2nd.

The result: Microsoft failed to get OOXML approved as an ISO standard. Yet, despite this, according to ISO standardization rules, because of the number and nature of the voting results, the OOXML proposal is set for a ballot resolution meeting scheduled for early 2008. Until then, submitted comments for the text proposal will be addressed.

OOXML Formats Aren’t Compatible

Now, although the OOXML issue, voting committees and ISO process may not seem like it has anything to do with you or your PDF work, if you’re a PC user looking to upgrade to Office 2007, it will have an impact on the way you conduct your work.

This also goes for the PDF industry because: 1) MS Office-generated documents make up the majority, if not the entirety, of PDF source documents, and 2) OOXML is the backbone behind Microsoft’s quasi-PDF format, XPS. On a realistic level, how will Office 2007 impact the PDF?

First, if OOXML is approved, it will mean that its default formats—.docx, .pptx, .xlsx, will gradually be implemented into workflows. PDF ones included. As of right now, OOXML formats are operable on Office 2007 and Vista. If you’ve come across one of these formats, and tried opening them in Office 2003, then you can begin to understand the compatibility issue.

Oddly enough, you can open .docx, .pptx and .xlsx files within Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, which will automatically convert them to the PDF format, a quick strategy to avoid being locked out of an OOXML formatted document.

Yet, can you extract the PDF into these OOXML formats? As far as I know, No. PDF conversion software normally converts to Office 2003 formats. To get PDF content into an OOXML format, you’ll need to resave what Office 2007 calls a “compatible” .doc file as a “default” .docx file format. Apply this on a business level where the PDF is concerned, and you can get a sense of its potential impact on digital workflows.

The PDF Or The XPS Format: Which Would You Use?

This brings us to the second major Office 2007 issue as it relates to the PDF—XPS, Microsoft’s version of a final print and archiving format. Which one would you use?

When PostScript became a published standard, it generated a PDF industry built on third party developments, subset standards, and format recognition. If you remember, just a day before the Office 2007 release, Adobe submitted the PDF 1.7 specification for ISO certification, which said a lot on Adobe’s part, and the format. Adobe’s de facto standard format is based upon popular usage, and based on working trends. But as a standard, it can introduce even more stability for the workflows it has already generated.

Compare this to standardizing a technology just barely a year old. The XPS format is native to Microsoft products. If OOXML does take off, it will take time for the XPS format to reach that same level of versatility and reliability across systems and industries. To achieve this, Microsoft needs to focus on interoperability, which becomes a major factor on the adoption level. Microsoft has been heading in the Open Source direction to help facilitate that, which has many users scoffing as MS is notorious for closed source codes and associated with monopolization—both of which stifle innovation. Those 2 factors alone are primary examples of why published standards are important for vendors.

Where Competitors Meet

But the reality is that Microsoft Office is as common as the PDF is universal. There is no way XPS can not gain even the smallest bit of momentum with more developments, even if it loses a shot at ISO certification the next time, and despite the criticism thrown at OOXML. Already, there are XPS converters that are capable of viewing and converting XPS documents as you would PDFs. And this is where Adobe and Microsoft will have to make room for each other.

You can be sure that both formats will be out there, although, you can safely assume that the Adobe PDF, by far, will be the dominant one being used. But ironically, this duality can help to ensure that the best technology comes out on top.

The safest bet: if you’ve been a PDF user for a while now, chances are you’ll stay a PDF user for some time yet.

Able2Extract v.5.0 Is Here!

nospam@example.com (Reena) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:24:58 -0400

We are proud to announce that we have officially launched the upgraded version of our flagship products, Able2Extract and Able2Doc. It’s a whole new version on a whole new level with a whole new look!

New Able2Extract 5.0 Features

This latest 5.0 version is sporting newer, more advanced features that lets you convert your PDF into more formats than ever before. We’ve managed to pack this upgrade with a lot more conversion options. Like what?, you ask. Read on.

First off the list, Able2Extract v.5.0 now offers PDF to Image conversions. Our new PDF to Image converter can generate popular image file formats, such as JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG, and TIFF. You can designate the output directory, set image DPI and perform black and white conversions.

Second, with Able2Extract v. 5.0, you can now view and convert Microsoft’s new XPS document format. Convert XPS with all the same output features and conversion settings by simply opening and converting the format as you would a regular PDF file.

Third, this latest upgrade can support PDF Forms conversion. You can convert interactive PDF forms to editable Word Documents which you can fill out, save and modify later on. This conversion feature has the ability to retain form elements, such as text fields, radio buttons, and checkboxes.

Our Able2Doc v.4.0 can perform the same PDF Forms to Word conversion, and can also support XPS to Word conversion capabilities. Ideal for those who are only looking to convert to Word and TXT file formats.

Go ahead and sample these new features for yourself. You can download the free trial, in either the Standard or Professional versions, and take it for a test run. For ordering, product , and pricing details, check out our site—it, too, has undergone a bit of remodeling.

Enjoy!