Juzer Burhani

Adobe Reader 9, the free PDF viewer from Adobe, is up for grabs.
As far as looks are concerned, the new release is almost identical to Adobe Reader 8 though it does load slightly faster and is quite nicely integrated with Acrobat.com and Buzzword (read Acrobat.com Review).

That means you can now upload documents & photos to the web from Adobe Reader or even create new PDF files using the PDF writing engine of Acrobat.com.
So should you upgrade to Adobe Reader 9 when there are no new capabilities as far as reading PDF files is concerned?
Well, if you use any of the acrobat.com services or exchange PDFs created in Adobe Acrobat 9, this is a must have upgrade.
Others may want to download the ~34 MB installer of Adobe Reader 9 if they are looking for some speed improvements.

Google announced they improved their handing of Flash files in search results; they say they now have a better ability “to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds,” including buttons, gadgets and so on. Google were already able to find and read Flash files to some extent, but now, to quote them (my emphasis):
<Our algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way, and that content is then available to be indexed. We can’t tell you all of the proprietary details, but we can tell you that the algorithm’s effectiveness was improved by utilizing Adobe’s new Searchable SWF library.>>
Additionally to finding text, Google says they’re also finding URLs to feed them to their “crawling pipeline.” Apparently, all with a little help from Flash-maker Adobe.

Limitations

Google write they may not be able to execute some types of JavaScript, though, so “if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file”. Also, external resources loaded into the Flash – say, an XML content file for a cross-language Flash application – while perhaps being separately indexed, will not be considered part of the main Flash content. Google additionally suggests there are some problems at the moment with bidirectional languages used in Flash.
Note that Google’s stated JavaScript limitation may not apply to all types of inclusions. For instance, a search for site:sketchswap.com filetype:swf (replace the domain with your own to check) reveals that Google indexed the Flash file my friend and I included via the popular, JavaScript-based SWFObject library (not to say that this was the route Google took to discover the SWF).

Adobe announced that it provided some its Flash technology to Google and Yahoo in order to improve the indexing of SWF files and especially Flex applications. "Although search engines already index static text and links within SWF files, RIAs and dynamic web content have been generally difficult to fully expose to search engines because of their changing states."



To solve this problem, Adobe decided to share Flash Player technology that allows search engines to walk through a SWF file and simulate user interactions. "We've developed an algorithm that explores Flash files in the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons, entering input, and so on. Our algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way, and that content is then available to be indexed," explains Google's Webmaster Blog. The indexing algorithm, which is already live, has some important limitations: it ignores Flash files loaded using JavaScript and it separately handles external resources loaded by Flash files.



I couldn't find too many Flash sites that are fully indexed by Google, probably because we need to wait until Google updates its index.

The world is so excited about the launch of acrobat.com - a web based suite with a word processor, a screen sharing application, a PDF converter and online file hosting.

Like everything else from Adobe, it is a real pleasure working with every single component of Acrobat online. The interface is very well designed, the various features work just as expected and those visual effects make this suite all the more attractive.

And Adobe Buzzword is probably the only online word processor that can read as well as write files in the new docx format of Microsoft Office Word 2007.

The upcoming Adobe Reader 9 is tightly integrated with acrobat.com such that you can share PDF files on the web from the desktop itself.

I have been playing with acrobat.com for few hours and have found certain limitations that are difficult to ignore:

1. The PDF conversion engine of acrobat.com allows you to convert only up to 5 documents into PDF online. Am not sure why Adobe has imposed this low limit when services like Google Docs, Zamzar or Scribd offer unlimited conversions.

2. Adobe Acrobat.com offers 5 GB of free online storage but you cannot upload audio or video files including Adobe’s own Flash video format. You may however store PDFs, Office documents, images, Adobe formats (like Photoshop, Illustrator) and SWF files.

3. While you may upload documents to Acrobat.com in bulk using the web browser or by dragging them into the Acrobat AIR app, uploading files via email is currently not possible.

4. With 5 GB of storage space, you can literally upload thousands of files to your Acrobat.com account but managing so many files can get extremely tough because everything gets stored at one place - you can’t tag documents or arrange them in folders.

5. There’s no search feature in acrobat.com - forget searching inside the documents, there’s no option to search for file names even.

6. Adobe Acrobat.com offers an excellent file preview feature where you can read Office documents in the browser itself but the problem is that it renders everything in Flash. You therefore cannot copy-paste text or images from the documents without downloading them locally.

7. Each document on acrobat.com has its own unique web address but since you can publish documents as HTML web pages, the content will remain inaccessible on most mobile phone that cannot understand Flash (like my BlackBerry).

8. While you can upload files to acrobat.com in bulk via the browser or desktop, the reverse is is not possible. It is not possible to export all documents out of Acrobat.com in one go though you can download them one by one. A similar issue exists in Google Docs as well.

It goes without saying that Adobe, with the launch of acrobat.com, is very serious about the web office space. The product is impressive (especially document collaboration) but I think Adobe still has some way to go before we can call it a threat to competing products like Google Docs, WebEx, Microsoft Office or even Scribd as some people are saying on Techmeme.

The next-gen web is starting to gather pace, as this week MySpace integrated Google Gears, Yahoo! announced their new BrowserPlus product and Google launched a browser-based edition of their 3D Earth product. Technologies and formats such as AIR, Silverlight, JavaFX, Gears, XUL, Web Applications 1.0 (DOM5, HTML5 etc.) allow developers to accelerate beyond AJAX and towards a new generation of web applications with better performance, more functionality and tighter desktop integration.

Developers and users are now presented with more web technology choice then ever before; “DLL hell” has been succeeded by “plug-in hell”, as a variety of companies present their versions of what the next-gen web will look like. But on the web, such choice can come at a cost to both users and developers. More than a decade has passed since the first battle over web formats, back then it was Microsoft, Netscape, Apple, AOL and others laying different foundations in the form of browsers, scripting languages, web servers and more. The legacy of that battle is still being felt today, as Javascript developers rely on whole libraries to assist them in developing cross-browser code and CSS developers depend on a catalog of hacks so that their sites can look consistent across different browsers.

With the new rich web application technologies still in the development phase, there is an opportunity to not repeat the mistakes of the past and instead take a standards-based approach. Thankfully during the course of the previous decade companies such as Microsoft became more receptive to open standards, data portability and cross-platform support. Having broad support for open standards simplifies technology for both users and developers, but it is obvious that not all of the currently announced technologies, such as those listed above, will succeed or survive.

via TechCrunch

Adobe today released the first public beta of Dreamweaver CS4, the popular WYSIWYG editor from Macromedia that later replaced Adobe’s own GoLive software.

To download Dreamweaver CS4, you need a serial number of either Dreamweaver CS3 or any of the Adobe Creative Suite editions. If you don’t have a licensed copy, you only get a 2-day free trial.

This is an intelligent strategy from Adobe. They invite all existing customers into the beta cycle, some of them may get used to the new features and will therefore upgrade when the product gets released.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 can be installed alongside Dreamweaver CS3 though you may run only one product at a time. The software is available for both Mac and Windows.

Available at Adobe Labs. For new features, check these screencast videos at Adobe TV.

Other than DW, Fireworks CS4 is also available on Adobe Labs and Photoshop CS4 is expected to make an appearance soon. Thanks Scott Fegette.