Thread: Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended

THE JUGGERNAUT OF PORTABLE DOCUMENT CRE ation is getting more powerful, judging from Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended (the high end among three versions of the latest release that do more than read PDFs). PDF Portfolios-the most impressive of three big, new features-lets you combine different file types (including multimedia) in a PDF document and add eye-catching tools for navigating complex, tree-structured file sets.



Another terrific addition converts standard video formats into Flash you can embed into a PDF file. Anyone with the free Adobe Reader will be able to view the videos. The third major enhancement offers three different document comparison algorithms: one for docs with mostly text and tables, another for presentations and graphics-rich files, and a third for scanned documents.

Acrobat 9 also promises to reduce the frustration of collaboration: You'll now find live-chat and shared-document features, complete with free storage and chat hosting on a new Adobe site. And although this is a major update, you won't have to learn an entirely new app. The product largely sticks to the previous interface style.
Some rough spots linger.

The overlap between the features in the top-line menus and the toolbar remains confusing, and I'm disappointed to find that the OCR capability still can't properly scan pages from old books and newspapers. Nevertheless, Acrobat is the gold standard for PDF management, and this version is brilliant. No one with professional responsibility for exchanging and managing data should be without it.