Adobe launches Acrobat 9, Creative Suite 3.3 and Acrobat.com

Adobe Systems earlier this week launched Acrobat.com, a suite of hosted services available as public beta for free signup, that put communication, productivity and collaboration tools within a web browser, enabling individuals to work collaboratively on electronic documents.

www.acrobat.com is a set of online services — file sharing and storage, PDF converter, online word processor and web conferencing — that take advantage of PDF, Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR technologies to deliver online experiences that go well beyond traditional office productivity tools. It is also accessible through Adobe Acrobat 9, which also launched on Monday, 2 June 2008. Acrobat 9 is intended to be a significant upgrade that will transform the process of creating and sharing electronic documents. It delivers native support for Adobe Flash technology, the ability to unify a wide range of content in rich PDF Portfolios and access to real-time capabilities for co-navigating a PDF document with colleagues.

The hosted services in Acrobat.com include:

Adobe Buzzword, a Web-based word processor that can be used to easily co-author and share documents for comment and review, creating high-quality print results;
Adobe ConnectNow, a personal web conferencing service that includes desktop sharing, video and voice conferencing and integrated chat;
Centralised online file sharing with access controls, online PDF conversion for up to five documents, and support for high quality, web-embeddable documents;
Developer APIs for real-time collaboration, file sharing and conversion.

In addition, Acrobat.com gives Acrobat 9 users access to a “personal workspace in the clouds” that is available from virtually anywhere for working with others online.

Acrobat.com also works with Adobe Reader® 9 software, giving Adobe Reader 9 users easy access to Acrobat.com so they can share files, convert up to five documents to PDF online and participate in electronic forms and shared reviews initiated by Acrobat 9 users.

The Acrobat 9 Pro software will be integrated into Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 Design Premium and Standard editions, Creative Suite 3.3 Web Premium and Creative Suite 3.3 Master Collection editions. Creative Suite 3.3 Design Premium also includes Adobe Fireworks CS3 as a special offering for designers who need to rapidly prototype and generate websites.

More information on the Acrobat 9 family is available www.adobe.com/acrobat. For more detailed information about Acrobat 9 Pro in CS3.3, go to www.adobe.com/go/acrobatpro_creative.